


sometimes death is temporary

by notjodieyet



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Actually a Grab Bag of Fics, F/F, Ghosts, Implied Sexual Content, Made Up Gallifreyan Curse Words, Making Out, Making Out in an Alternate London, Making Out in the TARDIS, Multi, Probably Misused Semicolons, Regeneration, actually a collection of one shots, dont look for canon in MY work, dont worry, is getting better at least, making out in a haunted house, or rather twelve died, rose & jackie are taking care of her, she got better, thirteen died
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-29
Updated: 2020-07-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:40:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 25,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22456609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notjodieyet/pseuds/notjodieyet
Summary: The Doctor has died again.Rose is sitting at her bed, fretting.
Relationships: Jackie Tyler & Rose Tyler, Missy/Rose Tyler, The Doctor (Doctor Who)/Rose Tyler, The Doctor/Missy (Doctor Who), The Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who), The Doctor/The Master/Rose Tyler, The Master (Doctor Who)/Rose Tyler, Thirteenth Doctor/Missy, Thirteenth Doctor/Missy/Rose Tyler, Thirteenth Doctor/Rose Tyler
Comments: 181
Kudos: 175





	1. Chapter 1

The Doctor had been sleeping for a solid few twelve hours, and was halfway through her thirteenth. Every so often, she would roll over, her lips parting, and a little bit of gold would escape her mouth. 

Rose Tyler didn’t _have_ to sit on her wife’s bed and watch her sleep for six of those hours, but the soft movement of her chest was comforting. She was worried, for some reason, that if she stood and left, something horrible would befall the Doctor and take her away. 

Jackie came in every once in a while with tea. It had been thirty minutes since Rose had seen her at all. It was almost as if she had an opposite philosophy to Rose: if she stayed too much in the room, something might happen to her daughter-in-law. 

Said daughter-in-law was now muttering something in her sleep. Rose took her hand and squeezed. 

“ _Gallifrey,_ ” she whispered. “ _Everything…_ ”

“Everything’s okay, love. Everything’s okay.” 

The Doctor snuggled back into her blankets, her face a concerned twist of guilt and sorrow. She was beautiful, tormented, restless, still glowing, still dressed in the clothes she died in. 

Rose took a breath.

The Doctor did too, her ribs moving under the blankets, her breath gentle and soft, the only part of her that was entirely relaxed. Rose wondered what thoughts were chasing through her brain, what pain she was putting herself through.

A sudden weight rested on Rose’s shoulder, and she wrenched her neck around and nearly tipped off the bed. Maybe she was a little jumpier than she’d thought. Jackie was standing there, in her pink bathrobe and holding the chipped teapot with flowers on it, and she said, “Dinner.”

“Who’s that for?” said Rose, pointing at the tea.

Jackie looked at the sleeping Doctor. “Him. Her. I guess. If she’s thirsty.”

“I don’t think she’s waking up anytime soon, mum,” Rose said, standing up and taking the teapot from Jackie, noting the tiny tremors of her mum’s hands. The deaths were hard on her.

The deaths were hard on the both of them. 

“Dinner time,” said Jackie, again. 

“I’m not hungry.” It was true, for the most part. Something nasty had been bubbling in her guts, and she’d felt sick all day. 

Jackie hugged her, out of nowhere. Jackie wasn’t the type to hug out of nowhere. Rose almost recoiled, but the warmth stopped her. The single heartbeat, valiantly chugging away inside the other woman’s chest. Jackie wasn’t her wife, not by a very long shot, but she didn’t have to be; Rose needed a little company.

“I love you, mum.”

She buried her face in Jackie’s shoulder, breathing in the temporary-ness and familiarity that was a human being, and they stood there, loving and scared and sad.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ok al convinced me to write something softer so have the sequel

When the Doctor woke up, she was alone.

That was probably just as well, she thought, wiggling out beneath her blankets (scratchy, pink, and marked on the tag with _RT_ ) and looking at herself, dismayed, in the mirror. Her clothes were _far_ too large, the ends of her sleeves dripping off her fingers, and her hair was very blonde. 

She’d never been a woman before. It was all very exciting.

The Doctor traced a curious finger across the skin on her cheek, getting used to her new bones. She placed her hand on her lower abdomen, where she knew that brand-new organs were sitting, ones that felt different and odd. The rest of her exploring would have to wait until later.

She needed some better-fitting trousers. And underpants. And possibly a bra for her chest.

_Her chest._ She couldn’t hear her hearts the same way as before. 

Quickly, fearfully, the Doctor inched her fingers under her shirt, relieved to feel the familiar beats of her hearts. They were trapped beneath extra tissue and nerves now, but still there, the both of them. 

Where had she been?

Clothes. She had been lying in Rose’s bed, which meant the closet in the corner was filled with all sorts of shirts and trousers that might fit a bit better now. Nearly hitting her knee on the bedpost on the way (she was so much _shorter_ now), she wandered over to the closet and stared at the options.

None of them would be permanent. Once she got back to the TARDIS, she could find something more… appropriate. She couldn’t very well encounter Daleks or the Master wearing a shirt that said _ASK ME ABOUT MY HOMESTUCK FANFICTION._

Pink sequins, though. That wasn’t completely awful. She found some nice jeans, too, and a bra similar in color to her own skin tone, which she fiddled with a lot and was still ninety percent sure she messed up. 

She looked herself up and down. The shirt was a little too short on the belly, and the jeans kept trying to slip down past her hips. She hadn’t gone so far as to steal underpants, and she hadn’t wanted to go around all open, so her old ones were still scrunched up around her thighs. 

The Doctor pursed her lips. She was presentable, at least for her wife and mother-in-law. 

They were sitting in the dining room, speaking in hushed tones about something or other, their pasta dinners entirely forgotten. They hadn’t made one for the Doctor, which was expected but still a little hurtful. 

A wave of dizziness hit her, the post-regeneration nausea still not completely worn off. Ah, well. She wouldn’t have been able to eat anyways.

She was thirsty, though — absolutely _parched_ — so she walked over to the sink to fill up a glass of water. No reason to disturb the Tyler ladies. Which she was now part of. She was a Tyler lady. 

_A Tyler lady._ It was a proud accomplishment, for some reason, one that sat under her collarbones and glowed. 

The noise from the sink faucet alerted both Rose and Jackie, and their heads turned, both immediately on high alert. 

“It’s okay,” said the Doctor. “No unexpected aliens.”

Rose squeaked and burst out of her chair, running into the Doctor’s arms and pressing her forehead against the Doctor’s. “Doctor!”

“The sink is on.”

“You’re okay?”

“The _sink_ , Rose.” The Doctor squirmed away from Rose and twisted it off. “Waste of water.” 

Rose giggled. “You’re not dead.”

“Not for the moment.”

“Come back here.”

Jackie had stood up, sometime when the Doctor hadn’t been looking, and she hugged her as tightly as possible. “You gave us a scare.”

“I’m fine!”

“You’re _beautiful_ ,” said Rose, hugging the Doctor as well. “That is my shirt, though.”

“I’ll find something else soon.”

“I have to kiss my wife, mum, move,” said Rose, waving Jackie away. She laughed with the Doctor, and kissed her. 

“I’m going to get some water now,” said the Doctor. 

And the three Tyler ladies, one of them newly minted, chatted and ate and drank water late into the night.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> adventure time! 
> 
> come on grab your (alien) (regenerated) (wife) friends.
> 
> or, In Which There Is A Lizard, Philosophy, And Flying Aliens.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok i got a bit carried away
> 
> per usual, this is for you, al

Rose and the Doctor woke up in each other’s arms, warm and bare-skinned. The Doctor woke first, per usual, trailing light kisses across her wife’s nose and eyebrows and eyelids, whispering to her _I love you_ in the languages she’d accumulated over the years.

“I love you,” said the Doctor, in English.

“Mmm,” murmured Rose, her lashes fluttering. “I’m awake, I’m awake.”

“I’ll make breakfast. Don’t worry.”

The Doctor clicked the lightswitch on, flooding the room with light. Rose rolled over in bed, hiding her eyes in her pillow. “Ughhhh. Doctor, please.”

“I have a surprise for you today!” The Doctor had picked out her favorite, sunny, pink-skied planet, a perfect honeymoon retreat for them to adjust to her new… _her._

Nothing could go wrong.

Probably.

* * *

They stepped out of the TARDIS, Rose clutching the Doctor’s arm. The pale-cherry sky blossomed above them, and trees surrounded them in every direction. Colorful houses perched in the branches, graceful winged Arboriaans flying from house to house.

“It’s gorgeous,” breathed Rose, seperating from the Doctor to admire the scenery.

“I thought you might want a bit of a break.”

Rose stopped at a tent that had been set up on the forest floor, where an Arboriaan was selling colorful charm bracelets and fabric hats. “Doctor, look!”

“Very pretty,” said the Doctor, feeling even shorter amongst the towering trees. “I booked us a hotel. We better go over before they give our room to somebody else.”

“Give me a second.”

“Rose…”

“Please?” Rose gave him those eyes of hers, those beautiful pleading gorgeous eyes, and the Doctor relented.

“Just — meet me at that tree over there,” she said. “Have fun. We’ll get dinner in an hour or two?”

“Sounds good.”

The Doctor wandered off to check into their hotel and discuss philosophy with an Arboriaan.

* * *

Their room was small but lovely, although completely windowless. That was all right. She would have other things to look at, soon.

There was a welcome booklet lying on the bed, and the Doctor sat and idly flipped through it while she waited for Rose. _Please no smoking in the room. Please keep quiet after midnight for respect for our neighbors. Please don’t go outside after dark._

Wait. Go outside after dark?

Something about that tugged at the corner of her mind. The tent, the treehouses…

The door creaked open before the Doctor had a chance to pin down her worries, and her hearts skipped a beat as Rose said, “Honeyyyy.”

The Doctor dropped the booklet and turned around. Rose was standing in the doorway, a shopping bag in her hand, a smile playing across her lips.

“Hey,” said the Doctor. “Do you want to go get lunch? Breakfast?”

“Sure! But I got you something.” Rose slipped her hand into the bag she was holding, and drew out a thick scroll. “You said you liked Arboriaan philosophy?”

“Oh, you are _beautiful,_ ” said the Doctor, more to the scroll than to her own wife. “And temporaral theory — that’s my favorite, Rose, how did you know?”

“I have to pay some attention to all the lecturing eventually,” said Rose, managing to sneak in a quick kiss before the Doctor escaped to read her philosophy. “You’re going to be in here all day with that, aren’t you?”

The Doctor managed to wrench her eyes from the page to say, “No, no, I’m sorry, darling. We can go out if you want.”

“It’s okay. I can watch you read, too.”

“No! I’ll read later…” _It is of course, entirely possible that multiple timelines do exist, as many prominent Árvorean Era philosophers noted._ “Ooh, multitempology! …I’m so sorry, Rose.”

Rose giggled and plopped on the bed next to the Doctor, curling her legs around the Time Lord. “What’s ‘squiggle-line-squiggle-circle’ mean?”

“It means ‘Rose Tyler is the absolute greatest,’” said the Doctor.

Rose kissed her on the jawbone. “What about ‘line-squiggle-dog face’?”

“That’s — oh, never mind. Does sort of look like a dog face, I guess. Is the TARDIS translation not working for you? I can go tinker with it.”

“It’s working fine. I’m making all of this up. I don’t understand who Trosi Strom is, though.”

“Ooh, I’m sure we could meet her, if you want to —”

“No, thank you.” Rose pressed her lips on the Doctor’s throat, and she swallowed to keep from squealing. “I’d rather stay in here. With you.”

The Doctor cleared her throat. “You’re very distracting.”

“From your very important book?”

“Yes.”

Rose slid her hands up the back of the Doctor’s new blue t-shirt, and said, “I have a few more important things for you.”

“Oh, all right,” said the Doctor, putting aside her wonderful new philosophy scroll to kiss her wife.

* * *

When they were both quite finished, (things had gone a bit further than either of them had expected) (well, they’d both expected it, if the Doctor was honest with herself. It had still been quite nice) and they were lying tangled and sweaty and smiling, Rose said, “Better than time philosophy?”

“No.”

She pouted. “Really?”

“Maybe a little bit,” said the Doctor, snuggling into her pillows. Her body was still very new, exciting, her nerves buzzing and all her recent-development-bits tingling. “Hungry?”

“Not really. Unless you are. I’m going to go freshen up. We can watch whatever sitcom you like right now —”

“It’s called _Parks and Recreation_ , and you know it,” the Doctor mumbled.

“— sure, your parking show.”

“ _Parks and Rec._ ”

“Yeah, uh-huh.”

“ _Parks and Rec_ , Rose!”

Rose winked and slipped into the bathroom, an infuriatingly smug smile on her face.

The Doctor settled a little more after she was gone, letting herself completely relax, the feeling of Rose’s touch still powdered on her skin.

She didn’t mean to drift off, but her eyelids started to get heavy, the intoxicating blackness of sleep settling into her bones.

Everything was all right.

The Doctor could finally relax.

* * *

The Doctor woke up a good few hours later, Rose’s arms wrapped around her middle, her hot breath on the back of the Doctor’s neck. She could feel Rose’s single, deceivingly fragile heart, beating courageously through her ribs.

“Rose.”

Rose didn’t respond. She’d fallen asleep too, then. The Doctor was scared to move even an inch, for fear of waking the human woman.

The Doctor hadn’t been small enough to be really and properly the little spoon, as it were, in ages. It wasn’t nicer, per se, but it was _nice_.

Rose said, very quietly, “Are you up?”

“Are _you_?”

“Not really.”

“Sleep well?” said the Doctor.

She could feel Rose leave the barest, butterfly-winged kiss against her spine. “Yeah. I dreamed about you,” she said.

The Doctor raised her eyebrows, despite the fact that she knew Rose couldn’t see them. “ _Really_?” she asked.

“Oh, don’t start getting full of yourself. You were turned into a statue.”

“Did you free me with a kiss?” said the Doctor.

“No, I woke up.”

The Doctor sighed and rolled over, freeing herself from Rose’s sticky embrace. “Ah, well.”

“Do you want to watch your re-creating show?”

“ _Parks and Rec_ , my goodness,” said the Doctor. “And yes. Sure.”

Rose shifted and picked up a glowy orb from the sidetable, tossing it to the Doctor. “Turn on the TV. Or whatever it is.”

The Doctor did, flicking it to Earth’s Netflix with only a little bit of tinkering, and she turned on _Parks and Recreation._

“Leslie’s hot,” said Rose, cuddling back up to the Doctor.

“Really?”

“Oh, totally. Pretty, smart, overenthusiastic, not great at actually communicating with people… just my type.”

The Doctor felt flattered, for a moment. “ _Pretty_? You think I’m pretty?”

“Yes, Doctor.”

“Wait. I can communicate. I can. I _can_.”

“Nah.”

“I can!”

Rose made a face and picked up her phone from the floor. “Oh, it’s later than we thought.”

“We didn’t think anything.”

“Well, it’s late. I think it’s dark out.”

The Doctor squinted at the walls, as if they would suddenly become transparent at her command. “I think it’s fine. Let’s go for dinner. Or whatever.”

“Sure. I—”

A muffled roar sounded from outside, and the room shook very slightly.

“Hello. What was that?” said the Doctor, sliding out of bed and pulling her clothes on. “Hmm. Too big to be a bear — aren’t bears here anyway.”

“It’s not important.”

“Everything is.” The room shook again, this time hard enough to send the Doctor stumbling. “That feels pretty important to me.”

“I thought this was a holiday.”

“Never said that. Where’s the sonic?”

“In your coat pocket. Do we really have to do this right now?”

The Doctor didn’t answer. She was certain that Rose knew the answer, anyways. Instead, she shrugged her coat on over her slim shoulders and pulled the sonic screwdriver out of the pocket.

“Think it’ll work through the walls?”

“No way to find out but try.” The Doctor pointed it at the floor.

“Anything?”

“No. We have to go downstairs.” _Please don’t go outside after dark._ “We might have to _sneak_ downstairs,” she amended, as the hotel room quaked again.

“Can’t just have one nice holiday,” she heard Rose grumble as they went down the darkened and winding stairs.

“All right, Rose. Tell me something. The Arboriaans developed wings to escape from small, land-based enemies. But recently, they started moving their villages back down to the ground. Correct?”

“I have no idea.”

“Correct. So why would they set up _canvas_ market stalls? Why would all their buildings be built in the treetops?”

“Because something scared them?”

The Doctor spun around and started to run down the stairs backward, which was very dangerous and also very cool-looking. “Ten points!”

“I’m your wife.”

“Right! Sorry. A hundred points!”

Rose sighed.

The lobby was too quiet. Not a single light flickered on the ceiling, not a single person sat behind the desk or by the door. There were no windows. How had she not noticed that before? _No windows_ , in a treetop hotel?

Get it together, she snapped at herself in her head. _Focus_. “Something _new_ scared them. Something that arrived here with the intention of —” The lobby shook, and the Doctor and Rose were thrown towards each other. “Ow. Sorry. The intention of doing _that_.”  
“But what?”

“Let’s find out.” She dashed to the door and sonicked the lock open. The balcony didn’t have a ladder down, and it was too dark to see to the forest floor.

Another roar, loud and wild, reminded the Doctor that they still weren’t alone.

“We have to get down there.”

“We can’t fly, Doctor.”

“We can’t see that thing either!”

“Will the sonic work now?” Rose snatched it from her and pointed it at the ground. “What’s it say?”

“It says energy readings too faint. We have to go down, Rose.” The Doctor glanced around for something that could help them reach the ground. “Where do they put the rope ladders?”

“A supply closet, probably.”

“Any idea of where the supply closets might be? _Think_ , think….”

“There was one right down the hall. Before the lobby. I’ll go check!” Rose shouted over her shoulder as she plunged again into the dark lobby.

The Doctor squinted at the forest floor. “Come on. Come on…”

Rose came back fairly soon, holding a mass of ropes. “Found it. I think it hooks on over there.”

“Hook it over, then.”

She did, with a bit of fumbling. The Doctor didn’t entirely trust the rope ladder, especially not in the dark, but she would rather she be on it if it broke than Rose.

“I’ll go first,” she said, dropping the sonic back in her pocket. “Go get a lantern, or a torch, or something, and follow me.”

“Love you.”

“Love you more. Go.”

She went, once again, leaving the Doctor to a possibly unstable rope ladder and the monster below.

“Nothing to it, is there,” she said to herself, and reached her foot down to the first rung.

It wobbled, but that wasn’t unexpected. She’d walked on worse. At least it wasn’t all that windy.

The Doctor managed to get what she assumed was halfway down before a large gust of wind swayed the ladder. She cursed under her breath and hung on as tightly as she could. “Who _are_ you?”

From above, Rose shouted, “I have a torch!”

“Shine it!”

A sharp, bright light blinded the Doctor, and she squeezed her eyes shut for a couple seconds. Rose made a high-pitched noise. The Doctor opened her eyes.

A huge lizard was lumbering about, stopping every so often to stand on its hind legs, wrap its front legs around a tree, and shake so the leaves fell into its mouth.

“Are you feeding?” The Doctor turned on the sonic. “Oh, darling, you’re a long way from home. How’d you get all the way here?”

“Why is there a _dragon_?” Rose screamed.

“Dragons have wings, Rose. This is a large lizard alien — can’t remember the name for the life of me — from Arboriaa’s neighbor planet. It seems to have lost its way.”

The lizard alien looked straight at the Doctor, and she gulped. “Careful now, buddy. I’m not a plant.”

It started to meander towards her, the ground shivering under its feet.

“All right, then.” The Doctor scrambled up the ladder, Rose giving her a hand up and pulling her onto the platform. “Thanks.” She started to pull the rope ladder back up, spooling it into a pile on the deck.

“Yeah. What was that?”

“I said. Lizard alien. I think it came in through a trade ship.”

“What?”

“A trade ship. One of the reasons Arboriaa’s philosophy is so good is becuase it’s in _constant contact_ with other planets. Everybody needs help to thrive.”

“Don’t preach at me, Doctor. What do we do?”

The Doctor chewed on her lip. “Go to sleep.”

“Huh?”

“It’s late. We should get to bed.”

“How do we get it back home?”

The Doctor grinned, slinging the rope ladder over her shoulder. “I have an idea.”

* * *

With a heavy sigh, and a dark glare at the Doctor, Rose shouted, “All aboard! Last call for flight to — where are we flying to?”

“Last flight to Odla!” said hte Doctor, much more enthusiastically, adjusting the hat she’d set at a carefully jaunty angle atop her head. “All aboard! _Alllllllllll_ aboard!!”

Rose smirked at her. “You’re too excited.”

“You’re too un-excited. I’m making up for it. It’s why we’re perfect for each other.”

“The lizard in the hold is still asleep, right?”

“Will be for the whole ride. Relax, darling. We’re soon to set off on our romantic four-hour ferry ride —”

“You said two hours!”

“I may have lied a little bit.”

“Bastard.”

“I got us a cabin.”

“Really?”

The Doctor nodded. “And we have snacks.”

“ _Really_?”

“And we can order in dinner.”

“You spoil me.”

“I love to.”

Rose kissed her in front of a spaceship with a lizard alien in the hold, and she was happy.


	4. Chapter 4

Impossibly, loudly, horribly, it was raining outside the TARDIS.

“You could always just move the ship, if you don’t like the sound,” said Rose, for the fiftieth time, looking up from her five quid romance novel to look at her wife, who was huddled under three blankets and shivering. 

“Shut _up_ ,” the Doctor snapped.

Rose returned to her book. It was awful. She was very fond of it.

The Doctor started singing something under her breath. She, and her blanket nest, were curled up at the end of the sofa, and Rose was sitting at the other end. Rose’s feet had gotten a bit cold, because the TARDIS heating system was acting up again, and she’d nestled them under the Doctor’s blankets so they were under the Doctor’s legs. 

Rose ignored her.

The Doctor sang louder.

Rose continued to steadfastedly ignore her, and turned a page. The male love interest apparently smelled like pine trees. Rose had never met a man that smelled like pine trees. The Doctor had just smelled strongly of vanilla, and still did. 

“Are you _listening_ to me, Rose?”

“No.” 

“You’re a bad spouse.”

“Yep.” 

The Doctor stuck out her lip in an annoyed pout. “Roooooose. It’s raaaiiiining.”

“Yep.”

“I don’t like the rain.”

“And again, I tell you: move the ship.” Rose squinted at her book to try to make sense of a particularly badly-written sentence. Was John really talking about _Emily_? This book really was truly terrible. 

A crack of thunder rang out through the living room and the Doctor squeaked, flinging herself into Rose’s arms and knocking the book off the couch. Rose laughed.

The Doctor buried her face in Rose’s chest, her blanket nest now covering both women. Rose kissed the top of her head. “The thunder scares you?”

“You know.”

Rose did know. She wrapped her legs around the Doctor, leaned down to the floor and grabbed the book again, flipping to the beginning. “It was raining when she saw him for the first time.”

“What?”

“He had chestnut-brown hair, that was slicked over his eyes, and he was wearing tight clothing. Emily Johnson had just crashed her car.” 

“Fun.”

The Doctor snuggled deeper into Rose’s arms, the rain evidently forgotten, and Rose continued to read until the storm stopped outside. By then, however, the Doctor had passed out, and was murmuring something about rain and trashy romance and analyzation.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Feel Feelings with lily hours
> 
> feat: the doctor being traumatized, a massage, bickering wives.
> 
> i'm not projecting you are

The Doctor walked past Rose, who was reheating them soup from the previous night for dinner, and sighed heavily.

“Seventeen,” commented Rose, stirring the pot of stew. 

“Shut it,” the Doctor said, snippishly.

Rose shrugged and stirred. “You tell me when you’re done acting like the world is ending in the next three minutes.”

She wandered off to do another lap around the kitchen. Rose looked back down at the soup. It was beginning to bubble. Rose switched off the oven, took the pot off the stove, and ladled it into two bowls. 

The Doctor walked back around and took a deep breath in. And out. 

“Eighteen,” said Rose. 

She sighed again.

“Nineteen,” said Rose. “Want dinner?”

The Doctor’s shoulders inched towards her ears. She’d been frustrated a lot recently, and Rose couldn’t quite tell why. It was weird to be married to somebody like the Doctor, sometimes. Rose was never, _never,_ upset about it. But it was _weird._

The Doctor knew everything. Or it felt like she knew everything, sometimes. How can a human woman, an average human woman, ever be enough for somebody like the Doctor?

Of course, then she would spill something all over some papers, or or cut her finger, or say something incredibly idiotic, or trip over her shoelaces… or she would look into Rose’s eyes in that specific way that sent sparks all over Rose’s skin, and everything would be all right.

That last one, specifically.

Rose did feel sort of helpless right now, though. Why was the Doctor so _stressed_?

The Doctor picked up her bowl and spoon and began to pace again, setting Rose on edge. “Stop circling. Please.”

“I’m not circling.”

“You’re circling, honey.”

“I’m fine. Look. I’m sitting down.” The Doctor plopped in her seat and took a large bite of steaming hot stew. “Ow.”

“It’s hot,” Rose warned.

“Super helpful.” The Doctor pouted and sighed at her soup. “Twenty, I know, I know,” she said, before Rose could say it. 

Rose looked at her. “What’s up?” she said, softly. 

“It’s my birthday,” said the Doctor, voice shaking ever so slightly.

Rose didn’t know exactly what trauma the Doctor had around her birthday. It might have been something recent. It might have been something so long ago the exact memories had disappeared, fizzling into horrible feelings that resurfaced every so often. 

Most likely — and Rose said _most likely_ because she knew the Doctor, she knew the ways her wife responded to certain things and how they showed up — it was survivor’s guilt. Another year of living through days some of her past friends and aquaintances would never get to see. 

“Happy birthday,” said Rose. “You all right?”

“A bit — a bit —” She rotated her shoulders. “My muscles feel all — hurt. Scrunchy. Like they’re…” The Doctor mimed crunching up paper. “Bad.”

Rose stood up and walked towards the door, waving for her wife to follow. She led her to their bedroom, and sat the Doctor down on the mattress.

“Rose. I’m very much up for, I mean, you know, but, well, I mean —”

“Chill, please.”

“What are you going to do?”

Rose hated the quiver in the Doctor’s voice, hated how she felt unsafe, even in her own home. “Try to loosen your muscles up a bit.”

“How?”

“By giving you a massage, okay?” Rose rested her palms, ever so slightly, on the Doctor’s shoulders, giving her the option to flinch away. “Is that all right with you?” 

“Yes.” 

Rose slipped her hands up the Doctor’s shirt, and hovered her fingertips against the Doctor’s skin. The Doctor flinched. “You all right?” This regeneration didn’t seem to have a problem with Rose touching her, but she wanted to make sure.

“Your hands are so cold!” the Doctor said, giggling. Rose loved hearing the sound from her lips, joyful and sweet. “Okay. Go.”

Rose pressed her hands onto the Doctor’s skin, working her fingers into her muscles as best as she could, watching the back of the Doctor’s head carefully for any negative reactions. “You all right?”

“Yep.”

Rose continued to knead the Doctor’s back, and she was delighted to hear a teeny squeak of happiness from her wife. “You still all right?” 

“I’m fine.”

“Don’t snap at me,” Rose said. 

“Sorry.”

They lapsed into a comfortable silence, punctuated every so often with little noises from the Doctor. 

“Do you want to talk? About why you keep…. sighing.” Rose knew the topic was probably going to set the Doctor on edge again, but she wanted to know. Communication with her spouse, and all that good stuff that kept a marriage together. 

“No,” said the Doctor, shortly.

“Okay. Later, maybe?”

“Maybe.”

Rose slid her hands out from the Doctor’s shirt. “All good?”

“All good,” said the Doctor. “My muscles don’t feel all. Crunchy. Anymore.” 

“Good.” Rose tapped her on the shoulder, and the Doctor turned around. “You know you can talk to me? About whatever.”

“Of course I know, Rose —”

“Sometimes I think you don’t. I’m your _wife_ , okay, and that’s got to mean something.”

“It does.”

“Tell me if something’s wrong. Please.”

The Doctor met Rose’s eyes and said, “There isn’t anything wrong but my own fucked-up brain, okay?”

“Can’t believe you just insulted _my wife’s_ brain.”

The Doctor laughed. “Sorry. It’s just — I don’t know if I can talk about it. Right now.” 

“That’s okay! Later?”

“Maybe.” 

“Maybe is okay.” Rose leaned forward and kissed the Doctor’s forehead, right between her eyebrows. “I’m going to go finish my dinner. Or, uh, _start._ ”

The Doctor hugged her, fiercely, out of nowhere. “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” said Rose, and sat there, and let the Doctor hug her. Dinner would probably have to wait.

That was okay.


	6. Chapter 6

Rose and the Doctor stepped off the TARDIS, hand in hand, and the wind blew into Rose’s face.

She spat strands of freshly brushed blonde hair out of her mouth. “What the hell?”

“Oop.” The Doctor giggled and gave her a hand. “You all right?”

“Totally fine. We shoulda landed the other way ‘round, though,” said Rose, glancing around. They were in some sort of street, horses and carriages on the road and ladies with big skirts and umbrellas on the sidewalk. “Where are we headed?”

“Miss, uh… Masters? She said her house was haunted. Contacted me ages ago. Asked if we could stay in for a night or so.” The Doctor pulled a folded piece of paper from her coat pocket. “Just up the street a bit. Big old thing, I think.”

“The house?”

“We’ll see, I guess.”

Rose knew what she meant by _big old thing_ within the next few minutes. The Masters house was a big old thing, with gables (Rose didn’t know what gables were, but they sounded fancy, and this was fancy), and dark red paint, and windowsills, and gold accents. The door was too tall, but the Doctor walked up to it and picked up the gold knocker.

“Here goes!” she said, and knocked.

The door was open in seconds, and a nervous-looking, mousy maid was on the other side. “You must be the Doctor. The Mistress is expecting you.”

“I’m the Doctor,” said the Doctor. “This is my… assistant. Rose Tyler. She can sleep with me.”  
 _Assistant_. Rose was going to give her wife hell when they were someplace more private.

The maid welcomed them inside. “The Mistress will see you shortly. Can I take your coats?”

Rose and the Doctor handed her their coats, and the maid scurried away. Rose had changed into something more period-appropriate for their excursion; the Doctor hadn’t. She thought she’d seen the maid give the Doctor a suspicious once-over when they’d come inside.

“Let’s go,” said the Doctor, grabbing Rose’s hand again and leading her out of the foyer into a large room.

Rose looked around. Her immediate thought was that it was the grandest house she’d ever seen, even though that was obviously untrue. She’d been inside palaces and castles and billionaire mansions.

Rose looked up, and nearly jumped out of her skin.

She’d thought they were alone, but there was a woman wearing purple standing regally at the banister. She was beautiful, and terrifying, and quite possibly the oldest woman Rose had ever seen.

No. Not old; she didn’t _look_ all that old, although her cheekbones were strong in the way older women’s are and her lips had thinned over the years. But age didn’t linger in her physical appearance. Rose was sure the woman could sweep down the stairs and run a knife through her without breaking a sweat.

But there was something in the woman’s pale blue eyes that made her look unbelievably ancient.

“Hello?” shouted Rose.

The woman seemed startled out of whatever train of thought she’d been trapped in, and she was just a gorgeous, middle-aged lady wearing purple, not an ageless alien with murder on her agenda. “Good morning, Miss Doctor. Welcome to the Masters household.”

The woman walked down the stairs, her movements graceful and lethal, and made her way over to the two of them.

“Oh. You’re short.” She looked at the Doctor and frowned.

“I’m not short,” said the Doctor.

“Nice to meet you,” said Rose, loudly, because she wasn’t quite sure what was happening.

The woman was less scary up close. Sure, she still looked like she could kill somebody without a thought, and she still had a particularly unsettling arch to her brows, but she was also heart-stoppingly beautiful and also smiling at Rose and the Doctor very brightly. “You can call me Missy,” said the woman, holding out a hand for the Doctor.

The Doctor took it and knelt to press her lips to Missy’s fingers, a surprisingly tender gesture for a complete stranger. “Pleasure to meet you.”

“I’ll have somebody show you to your room. Your… assistant… can sleep in the servants’ quarters, if you’d like.” A twinkle of — was that mischief? — flickered in Missy’s eyes. Why was Rose suddenly so sure that Missy knew she was more than an assistant? Why did Missy smell so familiar, like burning things and blood and steel? She was pretty sure that wasn’t how human Victorian ladies were supposed to smell.

“No servants’ quarters for my Rose. She can sleep with me.”

Missy smiled, a predatory smile. “Well. Josie! Come show our guests to their lodging.”

The same girl from earlier appeared from around a corner, her black dress and white apron stark against the soft orange lighting of the living room. She waved for the Doctor and Rose to follow, and led them through a dizzying amount of hallways and stairs. Finally, Josie pushed open a door and the Doctor and Rose walked into a bedroom.

The guest room — it had to have been exclusively for guests — had all the ornament and decoration of the rest of the house, but toned down and less… aggressive. The rest of the house was the perfect place to poetically drive a knife through somebody’s heart. This room was a nice place to sit down and have a pleasant conversation, perhaps over tea.

It was large, and had a long window set into the wall, which wine-red curtains were drawn over at the moment. The bed’s blankets were the same burgundy, and overly thick. There was a small round table by the window, and a desk in the corner, both of which looked like they hadn’t been used since the last guest came around, and a bell, presumably to ring for service.

“Nice accomodations,” said the Doctor, cheerfully toeing off her boots and bouncing onto the bed. “Ooh, blankets are soft! Rose, come here, feel feel feel.”

With a smile, Rose slipped off her heels and hopped on the bed next to her wife. It was big enough for the two of them, thankfully, and the blankets _were_ undeniably soft. “What d’ya think about this haunting situation?”

The Doctor flopped onto her back to stare at the high, elaborately carved ceiling. “I think Missy is a very nice woman.”

“I think something’s off with her.”

“What’s off?”

“I’m not quite sure yet.” Burning things and blood and steel. “I just think we should be keeping an eye out for something.”

“Perhaps,” said the Doctor, sitting up and crawling over to Rose. “Now keep an eye out for me.”

Rose kissed her, softly.

The Doctor kissed Rose again, for such a long time that Rose’s lungs ached and her lips hurt, and she pulled away to breathe. “God, not all of us have respiratory whatevers.”

“Mm. Bypasses. Again?”

Rose rolled her eyes and kissed the Doctor again.

A harsh knock sounded at the door and Rose sprang off her wife. The downside of fancy Victorian clothes and beautiful Victorian ladies was Victorian views on girls kissing.

Missy walked in, and raised an eyebrow at the two women together on the bed. Rose had that weird creeping feeling again, like some sixth sense was trying to warn her away. “Supper is in an hour.”

“Thanks. Do you want to tell us about your haunting?” said Rose, watching Missy for any sort of giveaway about what she was hiding.

“Sure.” Missy wrung her hands, walked over to the table, and sat down. “A woman died here, not so long ago.”

“In suspicious circumstances?” said Rose.

The Doctor shushed her. “You sound accusatory.”

“Maybe I’m accusing her,” Rose whispered.

“In… circumstances,” said Missy, with a visible amount of discomfort. “Circumstances, indeed. She was a vagabond of the worst sort.”

“Murderer?” guessed Rose.

“Murder is acceptable, under certain conditions.” That was not a normal human thing to say. Rose nudged the Doctor, to see if she’d caught it. “But this girl, she was a thief. A con artist. She worked for a loan shark, breaking knees and doing all sorts of unspeakable things. And yes, a murderer.”

“What’s the haunting like?” asked the Doctor, as if she was asking Missy’s cold symptoms.  
“At first? Things knocked over in the night, doors slamming, strange sounds… very basic, as hauntings go.” _As hauntings go?_ How much experience did she have with hauntings? How did a normal human being have experience with hauntings? “But then it got odder. I would wake up to hear songs from my childhood, or conversations I had long ago. One night, I woke to see a flashing blade coming down at my neck.” Missy’s fingers, her nails clipped and painted purple, hovered over her own throat.

“Are you all right?” said the Doctor.

“It disappeared before it could touch me. I’ve seen her face…” Missy’s voice drew distant, almost saddened. “I’ve seen _her_ … Floating in the corner of my mind, bloodied front and all…”

Rose watched Missy draw into herself, as if erasing guilt? No, even that was a show, a show of a show, pretense overlapping pretense.

The Doctor rose from the bed, walked over to Missy, and placed an awkard hand on her back. “Did you see her body?”

“She broke into my house. I called somebody. He killed her.”

“In front of you?”

Voice shaking, clear blue eyes filling with tears, Missy said, “Yes.”

“Do you think — _maybe_ — all the excitement’s been in your head and messing with what you’ve seen? I hate to say it, but watching a woman die, that can really screw with you. Maybe we could find you some sort of doctor.”

In these times? A therapist? Rose doubted it.

“I’m sure of what I saw. You’ll see her too.”

“We’ll stay here and look,” promised the Doctor. “Do you want a hug?”

Missy nodded, and stood to hug the Doctor. Rose met her eyes from across the room. _I’m watching you._

Supper was a few hours later, hours that Rose and the Doctor spent lazily making out in their borrowed bed.

Missy looked completely put together by then, sitting at the table with a ramrod-straight spine and a tall glass of red wine, no speck of the broken, crying woman that had been sitting in the guest room just a little while earlier.

“Good evening, ladies. Take a seat.”

The table was small and intimate, lit with wavering candles. Plates and forks were all laid out in complicated arrangements that made Rose squint. The Doctor sat down next to Missy and Rose sat next to her, so the three of them were in a nice little circle of suspicion and lies.

“Evening,” said the Doctor. “What’s for dinner?”

“Do you have guests over?”

“You mean do I eat on my own? I’m not the lonely older lady you make me out to be,” Missy said, a gentle quip that Rose would’ve never expected from her. Was this a peek past her unwavering persona?

The Doctor nodded, smiling. She looked like she was about to spend quite a few awkward, silent minutes staring into Missy’s eyes, so Rose said, “Politics, huh?”

Missy chuckled. “Politics indeed. What do you think about the king’s new policy?”

“The… king. Yeah. _That_ king,” said the Doctor. “Lots of thoughts. I’m just chock full of ‘em, you know?”

“We have opinions,” said Rose, who was beginning to think that politics was a terrible choice for conversation.

“I’d love to hear them,” said Missy, but they were saved from having to answer by a large platter of meat coming from the kitchen. “Ah! Dinner is served. Be a dear and give us some food, won’t you, Elizabeth?”

The blonde girl nodded and served them pieces of (was that turkey?) meat. Rose nodded a thank-you.

“You got my drink?” said the Doctor.

“Oh! Sorry, miss, it’s not done yet. I’ll have Harry bring it out.”

“Thank you.”

Elizabeth left, and the conversation veered towards literature. Missy mentioned a book she’d liked, the Doctor commented on the character development. Rose recognized none of the names and titles they threw around, but she was content to watch the Doctor so excited about something. Maybe Missy wasn’t all that bad after all.

When the main course was done, Elizabeth returned with a plate stacked tall with pastries, and Missy vehemently recommended a thriller about ghosts in basements. The Doctor never did get that ginger drink of hers.

“You’re a very pleasant dinner companion, Doctor. I do wish you could stay for longer.”

“You could always come with us, when we leave. See the universe.”

Missy smiled, sadly. “I wish I could, my dear. I wish I could.”

There was a strangely melancholy silence as they all stared at each other, two women and a Time Lord. “Well. It’s getting late,” said Missy. “A delight to see you tonight. Ring for staff if you need them.”

“Good night,” said the Doctor.

“Good night,” said Missy.

“Good night,” said Rose. “Don’t let the ghosties bite.”

* * *

Rose woke up in the middle of the night. It was dark. There was a woman standing over her.

“What — fuck, Doctor?”

The woman glowed unnaturally, and her face was definitely not that of Rose’s wife. She was also bleeding quite evidently, red all over her chest and splattered on her face, which was extremely unsettling and might affect Rose’s sleep patterns for a solid week or two.

“You aren’t her,” said the glowing woman, her voice as uneven as her form.

“Hey, Doctor, wake up, the ghost is here.”

The woman stared at Rose, her eyes wide and see-through.

The Doctor stirred, and murmured, “Shh, Kos, it’s a weekend… let me sleep in…” and then rolled over so she was pressed to Rose’s side.

“Doctor. Ghost alert. Ghostbuster time. Whatever.”

“Rose…?”

“Yeah.”

The Doctor’s eyelids fluttered open. “Hmm. That _is_ a ghost.”

She sat up, adjusted her nightgown around her shoulders, and dug in the pocket to find her sonic screwdriver. The lady didn’t move a muscle as the Doctor waved the sonic around, that familiar buzzing sounding too loud in the night. “She’s human. And dead.”

The dead woman nodded.

“I’m so sorry, sweetheart. But you can’t hang around here forever.”

“I want revenge. She _murdered_ me.”

“Do you want to come here? Come here.” The Doctor patted the bed between them. “Come here.”

The ghost looked like she was going to cry. Rose shot a dirty look at her wife (a ghost? In their bed? Really?) but she moved over to give the dead girl some room. The ghost was cold, and solid enough to press her freezing ankles to Rose’s calves.

Rose sulked at the dark room.

She fell asleep in minutes.

* * *

She woke up to only her wife in bed with her, and sunlight streaming its way through the burgundy curtains. The ghost was gone. (Had it ever been there in the first place?)

Rose left a soft kiss on the Doctor’s forehead, before slipping out of bed and putting on the dress she’d worn yesterday. She had other dresses back at the TARDIS, but she also didn’t want to walk the two blocks in her nightgown. It was still uncomfortably tight, but she was quickly getting used to the pressure around her middle.

Missy was already awake. Rose didn’t know what time it was, but it seemed too early for a fancy lady like her to be up and about.

“Morning,” said Rose.

Missy looked up from the white teacup she sipped from, licking her lips, her tongue dancing over her thin red mouth. “Miss Tyler. Good morning.”

Rose sat down across from her. “Sleep well?”

“Surprisingly so. Perhaps the ghost found somebody else to haunt. How’s my — how’s the Doctor?”

“Ah, still asleep.”

Missy grinned, a surprisingly un-ladylike gesture for her, and said, “Of course she’s sleeping in. She is the Doctor, still.”

“You sound like you know her.”

“Ah, Miss Tyler, I’ve simply heard quite a lot about her. Truly a character, she is.”

Rose nodded an agreement. “Look, Missy, I —”

“You’re in love with her. Oh, I know,” she said at Rose’s look of surprise. “It’s all right. I know a bit about loving women.”

“You….”

Missy smiled again, showing sharp white canines, and set down her teacup. “Do come here, Miss Tyler.”

Rose walked over to her, and she knelt, and Missy reached out and pressed her mouth to Rose’s. She tasted dangerous, angry, a flickering fire, a splash of blood on a marble floor. The Doctor was all right with this. Their relationship allowed for things like a terrifyingly beautiful Victorian lady who reminded Rose of a flashing, swirling storm.

Missy stood, and swept towards the door, leaving Rose with her knees on the wood. She turned for a second, to crook one slim finger, and Rose leapt to follow.

Missy opened a door marked _M_ , and pulled Rose so she was standing with the back of her legs to the purple bed. With a delighted laugh, Missy pushed Rose down onto her cushy blankets, and climbed on top of her, and they kissed and kissed and kissed.

“Your Doctor won’t mind, will she?” said Missy, her hands braced on either side of Rose’s head.

“She won’t.”

Missy resumed the kissing, which was very, very nice, and Rose reached up to tug Missy closer to her. The fabric of her dress was softer than imaginable, and her hearts pounded in tune with the beat in Rose’s chest.

Wait.

_Hearts._

Rose pushed Missy away and scrambled back on the bed. “Two. Two.”

“What?” There was a smear of bloodred lipstick across Missy’s cheek that made her look like an especially beautiful vampire.

“Time Lord.”

Missy’s blue eyes flicked left, then right, then left. She considered something for a moment, then simply cackled. “Ah, Mrs. Tyler, always the smart one, weren’t you?”

“Mrs?” _She knows. How does she know?_

“I gave a speech at your wedding, Rose, don’t you remember?”

“The only people who spoke at our wedding were my mum and Martha and Donna and —” It dawned on her. “You.”

“Me.”

“You look nice,” said Rose. Then, “Wait. You’re going to try to kill her.”

“Yes.”

“I thought you’d gotten over that!”

“I didn’t.” With a florish, Missy produced a shining key from her sleeve. “Pity you won’t get to our Doctor in time to warn her. Be a dear and stay quiet for me? The staff really can’t take another shock.”

Missy spun and walked to the door, and Rose realized a moment too late what she was planning to do. “Wait!”

“Bye-bye, Rose.”

She slammed the door shut and there was the sinister sound of a key turning in a lock.  
Rose had no intention of quietly staying put while Missy went to possibly murder her wife. But she had an ally here: ghost girl. Missy had probably killed her, which mostly explained the hauntings.

“Hey! Hello! Ghost!” shouted Rose, to the empty room. “Ghost!”

Nothing. Rose hoped the dead woman could hear her.

“Ghost?”

Rose didn’t see anything. Maybe the ghost was only visible at night. “Ghost. Please. I need to find the Doctor.”

The door of Missy’s bedroom quivered, and Rose’s heart jumped into her throat. It shuddered, and jumped about, and looked generally as if it was doing a little dance, before falling off its hinges entirely. Rose thought she saw a flash of a blue woman giving her the thumbs-up.

“Thanks.”

She jumped over the door, landed ungracefully in the hallway, and made it to her feet. The Doctor was up by now, probably, but where was she? Dining room? No, she didn’t eat breakfast for at least an hour after she got up. Kitchen? Ditto. Sitting room?

Probably. The Doctor did like to do some light reading or sketching in the morning. Rose took a minute to orient herself ( _Which way which way which way_ ) and then bolted off in the direction that she was _pretty_ sure was the sitting room.

She slid into the sitting room (bingo!) to see Missy standing in the middle of the room. Rose ducked behind the corner to keep from Missy noticing her, so she didn’t join the ghost woman.

The Doctor’s back was to the room, and she was scribbling in a notebook, sitting with her face to the sunshine streaming through the window.

“Now, now, now, Doctor. I think I have a few things to tell you,” said Missy. Rose wanted to burst from her hiding place, but she thought surprising Missy right now might end up being lethal.

“What?” said the Doctor, without turning around.

“You see, there’s been a few things I’ve had to… _conceal_.”

The Doctor spun around, looking confused. “Missy, what are you talking about?” she said. She seemed so concerned.

A flick of Missy’s wrist, and a short-bladed dagger was in her hand. “Just a few little secrets, darling, I’m sure you’ll understand. What are a few white lies between _friends_?”

“Missy. What’s going on?”

“We are friends, still, aren’t we? A little murder doesn’t change what we have.” Missy advanced on the Doctor, whose eyes were widening and widening.

“Missy.”

“Did you ever wonder what my real name was? It’s Mistress, by the way. The Mistress. But if you’d rather be more… _traditional_ , it’s…”

“Master,” breathed the Doctor.

“Gold star, Doctor,” said Missy.

“No. You — the haunting, that was real enough —”

Missy chuckled. “Well, _I_ killed the poor girl! She gave me a bit of a fright, and she had a weapon on her — you can hardly blame a girl to protect herself.”

“I can blame you for killing somebody.”

Missy tsked. “You know how this goes, Doctor darling.” She tapped her heel on the ground. The Doctor made a growling noise.

“No.”

“What if I say please?”

“You’re not going to say please.”

“Please. Or I’ll stab you.”

The Doctor fell to her knees, one after the other, very clearly not happy about it. “Master.”

“Now like you mean it,” hissed Missy, using the hand that wasn’t holding a shining blade to lift the Doctor’s chin. “Or I seperate your pretty head from your pretty neck.” She rested the tip of the knife on the Doctor’s bare throat.

“Ma—aster,” said the Doctor, her voice breaking in the middle of the word. “My Master.”

“I knew you had it in you.”

Rose made an embarassing squeaking noise and flung herself from behind the wall, jumping on Missy and toppling her over. The knife skidded across the wood floor, out of Missy’s reach.

The Doctor stood, brushed herself off, and cleared her throat. “Well.”

“She was going to kill you, Doctor, maybe a thank-you is in order?”

Missy shoved Rose off of her and clambered to her feet. She didn’t even step towards the lost dagger. “Mrs. Tyler, for the love of Rassilon.”

“I’m sorry I interrupted your _foreplay_ , Doctor, but she was _going to kill you._ ”

Missy tsked again. The Doctor flushed red.

“All is forgiven, Mrs. Tyler.”

“You’re not — why are _you_ forgiving me —” Rose stopped herself. She’d learned a long time ago that Time Lords didn’t function on any sort of logic or reason. Especially these two. “Yeah, okay. Do you wanna apologize to the woman that you killed?”

Missy blanched at the word _apologize,_ but she took one look at the Doctor and grumbled, “All right.”

The Doctor practically glowed. “You, apologizing? Never thought I’d see the —”

“Shut it.”

“Day,” the Doctor muttered.

Missy waved her arm in the air. “Ghost lady. Do you want me to say sorry or not?”

The dead woman appeared again. The blood was still spattered across her chest and her body was still blue and translucent, but something about her looked different. “I don’t forgive you,” she said.

“Mmm. Didn’t expect you to.”

“I want you to do something for me. So I can go on in peace.”

 _Go on to where?_ Rose wanted to ask, but didn’t.

Missy looked like she was about to say _not in my entire very long life will I do anything for you,_ but the Doctor eyed her and she managed, as if she was in physical pain, “Fine. What do you want?”

“My brother disappeared. Three years ago. They said he ran away, but now… now I think he was taken. By something like you.”

“Aliens?” suggested Rose.

The ghost nodded. “Bring me my brother.”

“I think this calls for an invitation, Doctor.”

The Doctor raised her eyebrows. “I don’t think the — I’m sorry, I didn’t get your name.”

“Peggy.”

“I don’t think Peggy wants to come along with us. Do correct me if I’m wrong.” The Doctor glanced towards Peggy’s flickering form.

“I didn’t mean Peggy. I meant your good old friend,” said Missy.

“Oh. Missy. Do you want to — well, erm, you know —”

“With pleasure, my dear Doctor.” Missy reached out a hand and the Doctor looked at it. “Don’t be like that.”

“Like what?” said the Doctor, with a flash of glee.

Peggy looked a little concerned, and said. “You _are_ going to find my brother?”

“Oh, of course. Rose, let’s go.” The Doctor looped her arm through Rose’s and shot a grin at ghost Peggy. “Don’t fall behind, Missy!”

And two Gallifreyans and one human woman left a ghost behind in England.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rose and Missy have a little talk.

Rose hummed quietly as she prepared herself breakfast. The Doctor had gone out early, before she’d even woken up, and Missy was nowhere to be seen. Rose ran a hand through her knotty, unbrushed hair. She’d been feeling very out of place, lately, rushed or hurried or something, like her schedule was just a little bit off-kilter.

She set the kettle on the stovetop and clicked on the heat, pulling out her phone. One missed message from the Doctor that read “hopped out for a bit luv youuu.”

Rose ate gluey oatmeal and waited for the kettle to whistle.

The kettle whistled, eventually. She took it off and poured steaming water into a teacup. Making tea was a practiced motion, a motion that calmed her, a motion she loved. It was Jackie’s solution to everything when Rose was a child. Hurt feelings? Cup of tea. Skinned knee? Perhaps a cup of tea could help that. Feeling down? Cup of tea. Lonely? Tea, tea, tea, tea.

She couldn’t put her finger on what was wrong now. It wasn’t her. It wasn’t the Doctor. It wasn’t even Missy, the whirlwind not-quite-newcomer. It was just something off.

Rose sprinkled sugar into her tea and swirled it in, absentmindedly. The Doctor had introduced her to Hozier some time ago, and she sang some to the empty kitchen. “You know when it’s twelve o’clock in Soho, baby, it’s gin o’clock when I wake up.” She took her oatmeal bowl under one arm and her tea in one hand. “I don’t know.”

She put the oatmeal down and took a long, hot, watery sip of tea. “I think about you, though, everywhere I go. And I’ve done everything and I’ve been —”

And the chair tipped that extra inch backwards and Rose Tyler toppled to the ground.

“Ah, _fuck_!”

* * *

Rose gave up on breakfast, and left her oatmeal in the sink. She wandered around the TARDIS, sipping her tea, opening door after door onto broom closets. How many broom closets could one spaceship contain?

“Tsk, tsk, Mrs. Tyler, come in or out, but don’t just stand in the doorway.”

Rose looked up. The library sprawled out in front of her; books and shelves and plush reading chairs where Rose could’ve sworn were only brooms a few seconds ago. Missy, reading a book marked on the cover with what she was pretty sure was Gallifreyan, was staring Rose piercingly in the eyes and tapping one perfectly manicured purple fingernail against the wood of her chair.

“Missy. Good morning.”

Missy didn’t respond, just beckon for Rose to step inside, impatiently. She looked back down at her book.

Rose picked a random novel off the center of a bookshelf. “Good morning, Missy.”

Nothing but silence and an irritating tap-tap-tap.

“Morning, Missy.”

She had the idea that she was being ignored. That was all right. Rose had been married to the Doctor for long enough that she knew how to be ignored.

There was a warm tube of lipstick in the back pocket of Rose’s jeans that was poking her in the bum, and she pulled it out. It was in a practically unsalvagable state, but she squished the mangled red onto her mouth anyway.

And there was Missy. Beautiful and poised and assured and perfect, or at least close, and Rose burned with jealousy.

“How do you do it?” Rose blurted.

Missy raised a dark eyebrow. “Do what, my dear Mrs. Tyler?”

Rose waved a hand at her. “All of it. How are you so — so _put together_?”

“I am not,” said Missy, chuckling a little. “I am not put together, Mrs. Tyler, I am not put together and I never _have_ been. I am not put together because I fell in love a long time ago, I fell so deeply in love every day felt like the suns were being reinvented and woven together with gold just for me. I was so happy…”

Rose bit her lip.

“I was so happy. And then he left. Left me all alone, a little boy crying to his books in the room that should fit two, sobbing. I wasn’t put together when I was him. I was a kid who didn’t know which way was up anymore now that the suns were balls of flame shining like crazy in the sky. Ohhhh, but you don’t fall out of love like that.”

Rose wasn’t quite sure exactly what Missy was saying, but she seemed impossible to interrupt now, so she just sat there quietly.

“You can hate. You can want to tear somebody’s throat out and leave them bleeding on the floor, and you can want to force them to watch everyone and everything they love murdered and burned to the ground, but you can’t get rid of that love. You have no idea what it’s like, to wake up every morning and wonder what will prevail today, that old rusty friendship or that star-shattering love or that blood and _rage_.”

Rose held out her open palm in the empty space between them, an offering of a hand to hold, but Missy didn’t even seem to notice.

“So no, Rose Tyler, I am not put together, because I don’t even know who I am. Because every day is a scramble to figure out whether or not I want to tear her apart or kiss her till our lips are so sore we can’t form words.” Missy paused to press a single finger to her lips. “I spend a half hour every morning putting on lipstick and pinning up my hair and trying not to poke my eye out with the mascara wand, but that doesn’t mean a single thing.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I don’t need your sorrys.”

“I am anyway.”

Missy slammed her book shut with a loud, resounding noise, and stood up. “Have a very nice day, Mrs. Tyler. I’ll be on my way now.”

“Why?” said Rose.

“Hm?”

“Why did you tell me all that?”

Missy smiled, for a fleeting moment. “Very good question, Mrs. Tyler. I suppose you should really be asking: now that I’ve told you all that, how long until you wake up with a knife to your throat?”

Rose nervously tucked her hand, still floating in the space between their chairs, under her leg, as if that would protect her somehow.

Missy leaned forward and left a quick kiss on the very tip of Rose’s nose. “Don’t worry too much. I do have a brother to save, don’t I?”

Rose didn’t quite know how to respond to that, but she flushed and stammered anyway.

“And I’m off. I would like to get some research done today. Go find the Doctor, see if she’s done absolutely butchering the coolant tube repairs.” Missy smiled again, a dangerous, venomous smile.

Rose left the library, burdened with bonus knowledge she’d never asked for and a destroyed thing of lipstick in her pocket.

_I am not put together, because I don’t even know who I am._

Hm.


	8. Chapter 8

Missy was at the stove, which was concerning for a number of reasons.

First of all, Rose had never seen her bake anything or cook anything; she didn’t know if Missy even had the ability or the inclination to do either. Second of all, Missy was looking over her shoulder with an evil, bloodred smile.

“Good morning,” said Rose.

“I’m making pancakes,” said Missy.

That was also concerning, although Rose didn’t know why yet. She sat down at the dining table. “I usually have oatmeal for breakfast.”

“Don’t worry. My treat.” Missy winked, and it simultaneously disturbed Rose to her very core and stirred at something dark and intimate deep inside her. Missy whistled a jaunty little tune as she flipped pancakes on the stove.

Rose decided not to argue with her, and instead began twisting a strand of her hair around a finger. She still bleached it regularly; Donna used to chide her it was bad for her scalp, but the one time she let the brown grow out all the way the Doctor gaped at her for three minutes straight. She liked it better blonde anyway.

Missy, on her part, had not pinned up her hair today, and it tumbled down her back in tight brown curls. Rose wondered if it was from laziness, or to annoy the Doctor, or to turn either of them on.

The whistling was beginning to burrow deep into the recesses of Rose’s brain, and she dug the heels of her palms into her ears. She knew it was pointless to ask Missy to stop.

Missy stopped anyway, in a minute or two, because the Doctor came in and hollered loud enough for Rose to hear, “If you don’t _stop_ that racket, I’m going to steal the spatula right out of your hand and shove it down your throat.”

Rose removed her hands from her ears to hear Missy say, “Kinky,” nice and slyly.

“Shut up.”

Missy switched off the stovetop and said, “I made pancakes, Doctor.” She flipped the last one onto the plate stacked high with pancakes on the counter next to the stove, and carried them all to the table. “Set the table, dear.”

Rose wasn’t sure which Tyler lady she was talking to, but the Doctor hopped to it without a question. “You don’t like making pancakes.”

“I like cooking.” (So she _did_ know how to cook. Rose still wouldn’t trust her around knives.)

The Doctor hummed, tunelessly, and set three plates down at the dining table. “You didn’t use a mix, did you?”

“Mixes are just the dry ingredients,” Rose pointed out (she used a mix whenever she made pancakes, and the Doctor _always_ insisted it made them unforgivably bland), but neither Time Lord is listening to her. Is that a Time Lord thing, or just a Them thing?

“I never use a mix, darling.”

Missy served them all pancakes, a warm smile on her red lips. To Rose, everything seemed strangely domestic — the breakfast-cooking with her hair down, the Doctor setting the table, and even their familiar bickering.

Her silly daydreams were broken by the Doctor immediately and inexplicably switching her plate with Missy’s, and Missy shouting at the ceiling and knocking the plate to the floor. “Dammit!”

“What the _fuck_ ,” said Rose.

“You bastard,” said the Doctor. “You think you can just get in here and make us breakfast… you didn’t poison Rose’s, too, did you?” Her voice got low and cold, and her face got dangerously close to Missy’s. Rose felt a bit ignored. “Because if you’ve killed her, I —”

“I didn’t kill your precious little girl.”

“Wife,” corrected the Doctor.

“Wife. It was just yours.”

The Doctor pushed her plate away. “I’m not hungry.”

“Don’t let my little game ruin your appetite!”

The Doctor glared at Missy, stood up, and stomped out of the room, leaving Rose and Missy alone in the dining room with the silent fallout of the Doctor’s voice.

Missy buried her head in her hands, her shoulders dropping. Rose ignored her, for a minute, and ate a bite of pancake. It was surprisingly good, and it didn’t taste of poison, at the very least. Not that Rose knew what poison tasted like, though. She could be swallowing arsenic and not have the faintest clue.

“How did you do it?” said Missy, and Rose absentmindedly twists the two rings on her left hand. “You and her are so permanent.”

“Well, I didn’t try to kill her all the time.”

Cue silent beat, and an eventual small awkward laugh from both of them.

“I guess that might work,” said Missy.

“The pancakes are good,” said Rose.

“Doesn’t really matter now, does it.” It was a rude thing to say, considering that Rose is right there, but Rose knew that Missy didn’t care about her opinion. It had never been about her. It was always, _always_ about the Doctor, the Doctor’s approval, the Doctor’s compliments, the Doctor’s complete and utter adoration…

“I’m still here,” said Rose.

Missy raised her eyebrows. “I think the two of us would muddle things a bit, no?”

Rose flushed, realizing what Missy meant. “Oh, I didn’t mean — I don’t think we should — I, um, no, not at all.”

“It’s agreed, then? We’ll stay apart; no kissing, none of your touchy-feely-huggy bullshit, and absolutely no sex.”

“Of course not.” Rose took another bite of pancake.

Missy clicked her tongue. “Glad we agree. Now, Mrs. Tyler, maple syrup?”

* * *

Exactly two hours later, Rose Tyler came to, warm, naked, and tangled in Missy’s arms.

“I don’t think —” She swallows, her mouth tasting of steel and smoke and apricots. “I don’t think we did very well.”

“I think you might be right.”

They stared at each other, Missy with a growing smirk and Rose with a growing blush, and Missy said, “Again?”

Rose sighed. “Again,” she allowed, and Missy jumped on her and started to kiss all the doubt out of her mouth, tasting like fire and metal and still apricots, for some reason.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just to establish: pete lived, this is not the alternate world. this time line does not fit in with EVIL HOT COCOA MAN; please regard them as separate universes.

Missy didn’t get a chance to even flirt with Jackie Tyler before she said, “Oh thank you for taking him Missy did you say pleasure to meet you,” and rushed out the door. Evidently, she and her husband were late to the musical the Doctor booked them tickets for; the musical Missy suggested Rose and the Doctor leave early to.

Missy had somehow ended up on the recieving end of the babysitting Rose’s brother deal, which she did not volunteer for, did not suggest that she wanted, and did not act like it was a job she would excel at. She was, actually, extremely surprised that she’d ended up with Tony Tyler.  
Rassilon’s tits, that was a terrible name.

Tony Tyler, King of Alliteration, was happily watching a show with what looked like sculpted creatures with ears. The minute he saw Missy from the corner of his eye, he said, “Who _are_ you?” and frowned, ignoring the show altogether.

“My name is Missy.”

Tony looked up at her. He’d met her, once, in her last regeneration, when she was quite a few inches taller and had a bit more stubble. But children had an eye for this sort of thing; children and smart girls. Rose had said she could smell it on them, who they were — that the Doctor was vanilla, Missy was steel and blood or whatever.

“Missy isn’t a name.”

The sounds of the cartoon Tony was watching had begun to make her want to tear her eardrums out and stuff them down the animated polar bear’s throat, so she picked up the remote and pressed the pause button like it would destroy a heavily populated, extraordinarily annoying planet. Which was to say, with unadulterated glee and satisfaction as the sound clicked off and left them in the pure silence of nobody talking (her most favorite noise in the world).

“You turned it off!” said Tony, and Missy bit back an “ _astute observation_.”

“You have a guest.” Missy sat down next to him and held out her hand. She was not, exactly, expecting her to kiss the back of her hand (she doubted he was taught such manners by _Jackie Tyler_ ); but a firm handshake would be acceptable. Instead, Tony grabbed her hand and very closely inspected it.

He looked up to her suspiciously, and said, “You don’t have any rings.”

She did, actually, have a ring; it was a very old engagement ring that was probably a bit too big for her, now. It was at the bottom of her purse, which she’d set down at the door. The purse also contained such child-friendly items as a seven inch dagger; a bottle of poison; her wallet with a nice £800 or so; a pair of handcuffs (for _mostly_ non-kinky reasons); and explosive hairpins. Missy thought both Rose, whose opinion she’d come to care much more about recently, and the Doctor would not appreciate if she gave Tony back with three less fingers and a burn across the side of his face.

“I don’t need any,” she said. She knew why he’d asked. Rose had two rings and the Doctor had one and both his parents had rings. “What do you like to do, Mr. Tony?”

He giggled at the formality, and said, “I’m hungry.”

“Good! I’m hungry too. What do you think about…” She remembered, retroactively, that she had no idea what four-year-olds ate, nor had she any idea what was stored within the Tylers’ fridge. “Scones! We must have scones.” British people had scones, right? (Or was that the Australians? Missy’s knowledge of Earth traditions was purposefully sketchy. She found humans to be utterly base and very boring).

Tony did not reply to her scone question, evidently finding it quite stupid. She was sure he would become more talkative as he was fed.

“Scones it is,” she said, sharply.

Missy found the scones in the cabinet after much searching, and she buttered one for Tony and one for her. He gave her a searching, suspicious look (goodness gracious, she wasn’t _poisoning_ him!) (yet) and Missy had to shove a large bite of scone in her own mouth before he started to gobble it down.

“So, Mr. Tony, what do you do for fun?” said Missy. He opened his mouth to reply and she held up a finger. “Chew, swallow, _then_ answer, please.”

Tony chewed, swallowed, and said, “Tag. Also space.”

“Those are very good interests.” Missy had the vague idea she was supposed to continue the conversation, so she said, “Have you got a favourite planet, dear?”

Tony pondered the question with scrunched-together brows, and she could see the gears of his mind clicking together as he raced to think of a favourite. It gave her a chance to cut a much more practically sized piece of scone and pop it into her mouth like the distinguished lady she so strived to be.

“Pluto.”

She refrained from correcting him in the assumption that Pluto was a planet, and instead said, “Very nice.”

“What’s yours?”

“Earth, perhaps. It’s a nice place to invade, sometimes.” Missy imagined the reaction she was going to get from the Doctor when she found out that Missy was teaching poor Tony Tyler about invading the motherfucking Earth, and she nearly squealed at the thought of the Doctor’s new face heated up and scrunched with anger. “I can’t say I prefer the Milky Way at all.”

Tony chewed more scone.

“Do you like playing games, Mr. Tony?”

Tony laughed again, crumbs of scone falling from his lips . “Why do you keep calling me that?”

“It makes you laugh, does it not? Is Mr. wrong?”

“Yeah. I’m not a Mr.”

“Are you a Miss?”

Tony shook his head, and took another large bite of his scone. He was getting dangerously close to finishing it all off. “No.”

“Something else?”

“Prince!”

Missy inclined her head. “Alright, Your Royal Highness. And would it befit Your Royal Highness to have another scone?”

“What’s befit mean?”

“It means another scone, Prince Tony?”

“No thanks.”

He burst up from the table, and Missy used the opportunity to eat the rest of her supper. (A scone for supper. Holy Bastard Founder Trinity of Gallifrey, she was a horrible parent, and the fact caused her undeniable pride.)

Prince Tony, His Royal Highness and He Of Many Scone Crumbs, returned holding aloft a foam sword. He pressed the flat hilt into Missy’s palm. “You’re my knight!”

Missy had a number of questions, first of which was _is my name Sir Missy_ , and somewhere at the bottom of that list was _is there a more functional sword anywhere in this house_. The flimsy foam trash in her hand had awful balance, was uncomfortable to hold, and was too dull to cut through melted butter. It was good to know that she’d remembered to retain her much-loved swordfighting ability in this regeneration; she’d forgotten it before, which was utterly embarrassing, and she was forced to relearn the entire skillset. Swordfighting was stored in the wrists.

“Thank you, Your Royal Highness,” she said.

He frowned. “I have to knight you,” he told her, and she winced. Kneeling was such a mortifying thing to do for a self trained villain to do. It was a thing for the Doctor, not _Missy_ , not in a million years, and still not after a few good glasses of whiskey.

But this was four year old Tony Tyler, who was probably related to Missy in some sort of roundabout in-law way, and Missy found herself gritting her teeth and lowering to the floor from her chair. She was still taller than him. That was the benefit of spending time with small children, Missy supposed. She might be the shortest on the TARDIS, but she was taller than this tiny human, which was more of a comfort than she would have liked.

“I knight you Knight Missy,” he said solemnly, which made no sense on any level of the word.

“Sir Missy?” she asked. “Dame Missy?”

“ _Knight Missy_ ,” he repeated, and she did not dare to stoke the fire of his unbridled certainty. “Get up.”

“Rise?”

“Rise,” Tony said, a small success for her.

She rose. (Hah.) “What first, Your Royal Highness?”

“Dragon fighting!!” he said, which would have only been a normal thing to proclaim if there were any dragons in close proximity. If there were, Missy was not aware of them, and she herself being knight as she was could not have qualified properly.

“Where is this dragon?”

With his own foam sword that had been recently aquired, Prince Tony gestured dramatically at the large orange sofa. Ah.

The sofa dragon was a foe not easily vanquished, with Prince Tony suffering multiple invisible wounds and Missy, when prompted, suffered at least one. Finally, Tony declared the dragon thoroughly beaten, which Missy was more than relieved to hear. “Why, Prince Tony, another victory for your kingdom!”

“Yeah!” said Tony, eloquently.

“Now, I know you aren’t interested in learning how to fight,” she said, kneeling down and adjusting his grip on the sword. “But I would like you to know how to place your hands.”

“You have a sword?”

Missy grinned at him. “Several. When you’re a bit older, I can teach you how to use them.”

This gained her an impressed gape. “When did you learn?”

“Ah. A long time ago.” Missy had no intention of explaining a Time Lord’s regenerative process at the moment, as it was a long and complicated beast with several knots and snags, especially her own relationship with it. “I was somebody else.”

“What kind of somebody?”

She’d said the wrong thing. “I was lots of somebodys. Don’t worry too much about it, darling.” And of course, don’t worry immediately drove the human mind to worry. What terribly predictable yet capricious creatures they were, Missy thought.

“How?”

“When — bad things, happen to me.” She tapped both her breasts, an old habit, in a familiar beat, as if reminding herself who she was. “I simply burn up and am born again. Like a phoenix.”

“A what?”

Wrong simile, perhaps. “I am carved anew. I become a new person.”

He blinked.

Missy stood and held up a finger. “One second, please.” She went to get her purse and took out her wallet, removing the several Polaroids of herself in former bodies. Tony snatched them and yet again was overwhelmed with awe.

“This is you?”

He was pointing at a younger Doctor. “No, that’s somebody else. I’m standing next to him.”

“That’s you?”

“Indeed.”

He flipped through the pictures, mistaking a Dalek, the Statue of Liberty, a former companion of the Doctor, and for some inexplicable reason, a tree in the background for Missy. She prided herself with every gasp of amazement; Missy had tailored many of those bodies oh so carefully, and she was never complimented. (The Doctor’s attempts at compliments were pleasureable, but not entirely satisfactory, she had to admit).

“Can you be them again?” He had paused on her very youngest incarnation, shyly grinning and bundled up against the cold of an Academy field trip. She could no longer remember the details of the excursion, only the discovered heat between her and her lover’s body in their shared hotel room, happy and flush with content.

“Not precisely.” Missy tried to remember the pieces of that body’s mind, the way he smiled, the way he sat, and she crossed one fragile wrist over the other, changing the way she moved ever so slightly. “I can pretend, though.”

“Are you?” He stabbed a finger at the picture.

“Sure.”  
“Cool.”  
Not much of a commendation for an act that was painfully reminding her of some things she didn’t want to rememember. Missy dropped her hands. “Find a different picture,” she prompted.

He did, a picture of a much later regeneration smirking at the Doctor, who was a multicolored smear of laughter. Missy had whispered something shockingly dirty into his ear the second before the picture was snapped, ruining his perfect composure and earning Missy a nice pegging into the mattress.

She giggled, remembering that afternoon. “I can do that one, if you’d like.” Missy straightened her spine, and checked the back corners of her brain for the dusty muscle memory that should still be buried somewhere faraway. “There you go, Mr. Tyler.” She was no longer Scottish. That was odd.

“You sound different.”

“I do, don’t I?”

“Can you tell me about the Doctor?”

He — she? (Missy wasn’t sure who she was, with her brain set in an earlier timeframe of herself. She made some adjustments) — hadn’t expected the question. Missy both loved and hated talking about the Doctor; she usually ended up sounding like a teenager talking about her celebrity crush. “You know her.”

“Yeah.”

Missy had the sudden urge to lace her fingers in front of her. This is what she got for playing pretend with a four year old. “She’s pretty now, isn’t she?”

“I guess?”

They were talking about his sister-in-law, after all. “Ah. Yes.”

“Rose loves her.”

“I’ve heard.” Rose and Missy had recently taken up much more intimate activities than their usual relationship called for, and for some reason, they both talked about the Doctor when they were lying together sleepy and sticky. _I love her_ , Rose had said. _You love her._

_If you love her, you should tell her about this._

_I’ve_ tried. And she had, Missy knew as much. The Doctor simply couldn’t fathom the two of them attracted to each other whatsoever.

Neither spoke about the fact that Missy never said _I love her._

“Do you love her?” said Tony.

“Sometimes.” That was the truest she could be. Sometimes. “Sometimes I hate her. It’s all very complicated, dear.”

“I thought if you loved somebody, you _always_ loved somebody.”

Missy patted his shoulder. “I can tell you that your mum and dad will always love you. And that your sister will always love you. Me and the Doctor… there’s a lot of stuff there, a lot of history.” Sometime in the past minute or so she’d gotten her old accent back. Curiouser and curiouser.

“Hm.”

She stood up, and took the wallet and the pictures from Tony. “There’s a library around the corner, no? Let’s go get some books about space. Where is your mother’s library card?”

* * *

Quite a few hours later, Missy had Tony tucked into bed, nearly asleep, listening to her read aloud about supernovas.

The front door downstairs opened, and four sets of footsteps walked into the house, voices chiming loudly and interrupting their reading time. Missy took off her reading glasses hastily and folded them into her pocket. They were being quite loud in the kitchen, and Tony looked blearily up to her.

“It’s all right. Just your mum home.”

“Mmkay.”

She clicked the light off and closed the door as quietly as possible. The Doctor was already upstairs, seemigly looking for Missy, and hugged her without warning. Missy flushed and stiffened.

“Sorry.” The Doctor pulled away.

“What was that?”

“Nothing.”

“It was something,” Missy grumbled. She hadn’t minded the hug; it was just suprising from this Doctor. “How was the show?”

“All right. Sorry you couldn’t come.”

“Rose downstairs?”

The Doctor nodded. “How was Tony?” She paled, and said, “You didn’t — I mean… he’s not —” She drew a silent line across her throat.

“He’s alive. Ye of little faith. He’s just nearly asleep. We had a very nice time.”

“Thank you, Missy.”

Those wonderful two words. Missy pretended she didn’t cherish them as much as she did. “That’s Knight Missy to you, thank you very much.”

The Doctor leaned forward, and for a minute Missy thought she was going to stab her or something, but instead the Doctor pressed her lips to Missy’s forehead for the briefest of seconds.

Missy thought she might faint.  
“Jackie said we could have dinner with her.”

Missy blinked.

“Rose wants to spend the night here, if you’re all right with it.”

She blinked again, and found herself unable to properly breathe. Rassilon, Omega, and the motherfucking Other, didn’t the Doctor understand she couldn’t just go around _kissing_ people?

“I think you can take the guest room.”

Missy couldn’t stop herself; she stepped forward, took the Doctor’s face in her hands, and kissed her and kissed her and kissed her.

When she was quite done, the Doctor said, “Oh.”

“Use your words.”

“ _Oh_ is a word.”

“Singular. Word singular.” Missy smirked at her, remembering that Polaroid of them together.

“Shut up.”

“Shut me up yourself.”

They looked at each other like teenagers drunk off a first kiss, which they were, sort of, until Rose came up the stairs. “Am I interrupting something?”

“Not at all,” said the Doctor brightly, as Missy said, “Yes, go away.”

Rose raised her eyebrows. “I’ll leave you girls alone.”

“Good idea,” said Missy.

Rose went back down the stairs. “Dinner in fifteen minutes!” she shouted.

Missy slipped her hand into the Doctor’s. “Now, my dearest Doctor,” she said. “Where is that guest room?”


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> martha and donna come for a visit.
> 
> or rather: it is a beautiful day in the tardis and you are a horrible missy.

_Dingggg!_

Rose dropped the wilting yellow flowers she was hurriedly stuffing in a glass vase, and checked her watch. Ten minutes early, and neither her wife nor… whatever Missy was, were anywhere in sight. Rose hoped they were together (they tended to cancel each other out by fighting or kissing) and they weren’t disassembling important parts of the spaceship before _their guests_ arrived.

“In a second!”

_Dinggggg!_

“In. A. Second.” Rose hurried to the door. “If it’s not my favorite private detective and doctor power couple!” Martha and Donna Jones-Noble both attacked her with a tsunami-strength hug. Rose giggled.

“How’ve you been?” said Martha, reluctantly stepping away. 

Rose stuttered something about lizard aliens and ghost girls, but Donna interrupted her before she could finish. “We brought champagne!”

“Ooh, alcohol. Yes. Enter.” Rose waved them in. The flowers in a droopy, yellow heap on the table, and she took a step to the side, doing her best to hide them from view. “Doctor’s in the back.” She hoped.

Donna sat down and glanced meaningfully at the failure of a flower arrangement. “…Garden’s doing well, huh?”

“Pretend you didn’t notice that.”

“Will do,” said Martha, gracefully. “The Doctor’s…” 

“In the back.” Rose realized that they had never met the Doctor’s new form, small and blonde and unpredictable as she was. 

“When will he be joining us?”

“After he’s done in the back, probably,” said Donna. 

“One would assume.” Rose scooped the flowers up and made her way to the kitchen, speaking over her shoulder as she walked. “And you should know —”

Rose quite nearly walked directly into a purple woman sipping tea. “Do watch your step, Blondie.” 

“How nice of you to appear when there’s nothing for you to do.”

“Woke up on the wrong side of the bed?” Missy leaned across to leave a wet kiss on Rose’s cheek. 

Rose glared at her. “Just don’t cause too much trouble.”

“There’s _trouble_ to be caused? You could have told me earlier!”

Rose shoved the squishy yellow mess she was clutching into Missy’s hands. “Put that in the compost, or something.” 

Missy rolled her eyes and dropped the flowers unceremoniously into the silver bowl for compost. “Can I see the trouble now?”

“What? No. I said no trouble.” 

“A little trouble?”

“No!”

“As a treat?”

Rose gently hit her across the arm. “Go remove small children’s bones, or whatever it is you do for fun.”

Missy glared. Rose was sure she was about to recieve some biting reply or perhaps a knife through the heart, but Donna interrupted them before Missy could lash out in any way. “Are the glasses still in the — who is that.”

Missy brightened and waved. Rose had seen her change personalities completely before, but it was still terrifying how quickly she could look unassuming, cheerful, good, _whatever she wanted to be_. “Donna!” she exclaimed (there was a second there were Rose was sure Missy was scrambling for the right name) and embraced her with more enthusiasm than Rose had ever seen Missy express for anything that wasn’t homicide-related. 

“Hi?”

Missy ran her hand through Donna’s ginger hair, and said, at approximately a mile a minute: “Hmm. You’ve been doing well, then? Solving lots of cases? A while ago I solved a case just using a pencil and a spoon! Now, that was a good time.” She took a breath to sling her arm around Rose’s shoulders. “Did I ever tell you that I was the inspiration for Sherlock Holmes?”

“What are you doing?” Rose hissed. 

“Rose, honey, go get a glass for Donna. My God, it’s been a while, hasn’t it?” Missy walked Donna into the dining room. Rose watched them go in absolute confusion.

She got Donna a glass and walked back into the dining room. Missy was sitting on the table, waving her arms about as she told a story about a rooftop and test scores. “I mean, you’re telling me — and then the squirrel, did you forget about the squirrel?”

“Missy?”

Missy turned her head to see Rose. “Oh, hello, love.”

“What the hell is this?” 

“Sit down. Champagne? Champagne. Your hair looks beautiful.”

Martha smiled. “The Doctor was telling us about your adventures in Russia?”

“The… Doctor, huh?” Rose raised an eyebrow at Missy, who smiled sweetly. “Was she. How curious.”

That was, either fortunately or unfortunately, the precise moment when the actual Doctor, as in Rose’s actual wife, chose to walk in the door. She lit up when she saw their guests, exclaiming a string of incoherent syllables and flapping her arms. 

After (confused) greetings were exchanged, the Doctor said, “It’s _me_ I changed look! I did my hair all long and I’ve got suspenders now! And I’m a wife!! Is this what it’s like to be a wife? I like it.” 

Martha pointed at Missy. “I thought —”

Missy pouted, but didn’t explain anything. The Doctor shot her a Look. “What has she been saying?”

“ _The Master_ has just been welcoming our guests,” said Rose. 

Martha giggled. Donna still looked slightly confused. Missy poured some wine. 

“Well,” said the Doctor. “How’re _you_?”


	11. Pocket London

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> look, a chapter with a title! (also, chapter ELEVEN?)
> 
> \-----

The air was crisp, the sky clear, and Missy stepped off her carriage with her umbrella in one hand. It was cold enough that she’d elected to wear sleek purple cashmere gloves with her sleek woolen walking jacket, and she tipped her driver a few quid and squinted at the New York City street in front of her.

With a spring in her step, a jaunty whistle, and the most beautiful smile on the East Coast, Missy stepped inside Mrs. Ophelia Cunningham’s millinery shop holding the key to destroying the universe.

“Good morning, Mrs. Cunningham.”

“Good morning, Mrs. Masters,” said Mrs. Cunningham, an old, frail woman with a shock of white hair and a horrifically green dress. As far as Missy could tell, she owned several of the same horrifically green dress, and she wore it every day in a predictable swish of horrific green. Mrs. Cunningham was stitching the flowers onto a pink ladies’ hat with her tongue between her thin lips, and she didn’t say another word to Missy.

Missy sat down behind the register and licked her own chapped lips. The shop opened in six minutes (she always arrived fashionably late) and she had until then to get herself in order. She took out her makeup mirror and snapped it open. Flawless, per usual.

She leaned back and spotted a very frustrated blonde through the window. Missy waved her hand — four more minutes until opening — but the woman shook her head. She was wearing a tweed waistcoat and a tasteful brown walking skirt, and she had one hand planted on her hip in a sneakingly familiar fashion.

“Mrs. Cunningham? May I open shop early?”

“Early?” Mrs. Cunningham raised one caterpillar eyebrow and kept stitching away.

“I’m afraid we have a customer.” Missy looked at the woman. _It’s been two weeks. There’s no way it’s her._ She slipped a hand into her coat pocket and ran her fingertip across the bronze of the key.

It had been one of her best ideas. A long time ago, she had built a pocket universe into the very back rooms of the TARDIS, with a dial for the timeline and a carefully constructed replica of London. (Only London, for now. London had taken long enough, and she had been rather distracted after making it as it was).

The structural integrity of the entire place was built around a safe in a room in a mansion that moved randomly every iteration of the pocket London (which Missy had affectionately nicknamed Pocketdon). The key to the safe belonged to a man who owned a restaurant which also moved randomly with every reset. So, essentially, the rules were: if Missy found the restaurant, finagled the key from the man, found the mansion, charmed her way in, located the safe, opened it, and shut London down, then she won.

If the Doctor could find her and stop her within a month, then _she_ won, and the Doctor had Rose Tyler’s help. Rose Tyler who, apparently, hadn’t accompanied her wife to Mrs. Cunningham’s millinery shop. Curious.

“Yes, dear, open the shop if you like,” said Mrs. Cunningham.

Missy strode to the door and opened it, meeting the Doctor’s eyes from the doorstep. “Come in!”

The Doctor nodded crisply (the Doctor almost never did things crisply, especially in this regeneration, and Missy found that she didn’t entirely dislike it) and held up a finger. “One second, please.”

“Of course, ma’am.” Missy stopped herself from checking for the key again. It had been nearly too easy to flirt out of Jonathan Trickelbank, the owner of the restaurant, and Missy hadn’t even needed to bribe him. It was a miracle what an eyelash flutter and a scandalous ankle flash could do to men.

She sat back down behind the counter again, and distracted herself by thinking about executions during the French Revolution.

The bell on the door rang with the sound of a new customer, and Missy nearly jumped out of her seat. It was not, in fact, the Doctor; instead it was a woman that Missy had helped pick out a hat for her father’s birthday party the week before. Or something. Missy didn’t pay too much attention to her work.

“Hello, Miss Pike! I see you’ve returned for the adjustments from Monday?”

Miss Pike wore a black veil, for, she said, the death of her husband the year prior. Missy had no inclination whatsoever to find out anything more about Mr. Pike. Humans were so dreadfully drippy when it came to death. (And the fewer new faces Missy had to memorize, the better).

“Yes, Mrs. Masters. And —” said Miss Pike, as Missy stood to retrieve her hat from the back room, “Do you think you can share some… advice, on something?”

“Of course, my dear. I think something pink would go well with that dress,” said Missy, giving Miss Pike a quick once-over, and smiling.

Miss Pike shook her head. “No, about something more personal. Do you mind if I follow you?” She gestured to the back room and Missy stole a furtive glance towards the Doctor, who was still in the window. Well, the Doctor could wait.

“Very well. After you.”

* * *

The back room was a mess of fabric scraps and half-finished hats, and Missy pulled up a stool from the corner and suggested Miss Pike sit down. She did, and crossed her ankles self-consciously, as if she wasn’t used to wearing a skirt of such volume, which was silly. “I’ve been having some trouble with my four-year-old, you see,” said Miss Pike in a shaking voice, and Missy sighed. It was going to be a long morning before she saw the Doctor.

Miss Pike prattled on about her son, and Missy made sure to interject a few sympathetic _mmm_ s and _oh dear_ s as she searched the room for Miss Pike’s hat box. “It’s just ever so difficult, you know?”

“Oh, I know,” said Missy, turning around. “I have a daughter.”

“Do you?”

“I do indeed.” She pulled out a box and found a collection of silver buttons instead of a hat. “I do? I did. I did have a daughter.”

“You…”

Missy opened another box. “Your hat, Miss Pike.” She handed Miss Pike the hat and a sunny smile.

“Thank you, Mrs. Masters.” Without warning, and with a fair bit of dribbling, Miss Pike threw her arms around Missy with a strange intensity. Missy patted Miss Pike’s veil, gently, thinking of all the strange emotions these simulated humans could pretend to have. “I’ll… be off.”

 _And I’ll be fixing the intimacy settings next time._ Missy gave a sharp nod. “On your way, then.”

Miss Pike left, sniffling and dribbling, and Missy followed her to the counter. Miss Pike had prepaid, and she simply left the shop in a swirl of black fabric and stifled sobs. Missy looked for the Doctor, but the Doctor had disappeared into, apparently, thin air.

Missy slipped her hand into her empty pocket and shrugged off her coat, putting it on the back of the chair. _Empty pocket._ She picked up the coat again and thrust her hand into the pocket. _No key._ “Fucking — fucking Rassilon and his fucking — Miss Pike.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Masters?”

Missy looked over to Mrs. Cunningham. “Nothing at all. Hat coming along?”

Mrs Cunningham merely tsked and stabbed at her fabric.

“I,” said Missy, standing up and slipping her jacket back on, “Am going for an early break.”

“All right,” said Mrs. Cunningham, with a surprising lack of concern.

Missy turned the _open_ sign around, strode out the door, and just saw a scrap of black fabric whisk around the corner. Miss Pike, if that was really her name, was just getting away with Missy’s key.

Missy wore heeled boots; it was a point of contest between her and the Doctor. Missy always wore heeled boots and a long skirt, which looked nice fashion-wise and was very bad for running. (She also hated running. It made her short of breath, and always had. A little persnickety hitch with her respiratory bypass that she still hadn’t fixed up). Nevertheless, Miss Pike was wearing heeled boots, a long skirt, and a black veil (which had to obstruct her vision slightly), and Missy found herself catching up.

She managed to grasp Miss Pike’s right sleeve, and Miss Pike yelped. “What are you doing?”

“The key. The _key_.” Missy yanked the veil off Miss Pike’s head, and all of a sudden there was no Miss Pike at all.

“I don’t have the key,” said Rose Tyler.

“Of course it’s you,” said Missy. Rose rolled her eyes. “Does the Doctor have it, then? The Doctor has it. Of course the Doctor has it.”

“Missy.”

“Clever girl, aren’t you.” If Missy wasn’t so pissed off, she would have kissed Rose. Mostly because Rose was pretty and a bit rumpled, but also because a good scheme had always gotten Missy hot and bothered.

“Thank you.” Rose flushed a bit, and seemed to remember their roles. “I don’t have the key, anyway.”

“You’re practically begging for a pat-down.”

The benefits of pretend Victorian London was that one could code out Victorian views on girls kissing. Missy and Rose didn’t have to worry about a single sideways glance or disapproving sniff as Missy lifted Rose off her feet and kissed her more intensely than any girl had been kissed in Pocket Universe London in its entire Pocket Universe existence.

“This isn’t a pat-down,” complained Rose, breathlessly, her legs hooked around Missy’s hips, suspended entirely in the air.

“Would you rather I get handsier?”

“Frankly? Yes.”

Missy was on the verge of backing Rose up against a wall and moving her hands conspicuously downwards, but she spotted the Doctor in the background, mounting the stone steps to a grand house. Without ceremony, Missy set Rose down (the action just barely not qualifying as dumping her on the ground) and raced after the Doctor. “You bastard!” she shouted.

“That’s not very ladylike, now, is it?” said Rose, from behind her. Missy did not pay her any mind.

The Doctor slipped in through the doors of the mansion and they closed behind her, the lock clicking shut. Missy had never been stopped by a simple lock, of course, and she took only a second to remove a sonic lockpick from her boot and get the door back open.

The interior of the mansion was nice enough, but Missy paid little attention to the crystal chandelier above and the polished tiled floor her heels clicked on below. “Doctor?”

There were rows of doors surrounding Missy, and through one of them was the Doctor and victory. Missy did _not_ have time for this. “Doctor!” She sent a telepathic searchlight through the empty hallways of the mansion, finding a few disturbed maids but not her own wife.

Of course, Missy had known the Doctor for quite a long time. (Some may say too long. Some may be Missy herself.) She knew how the Doctor thought, how the Doctor made decisions, how the Doctor picked random doors. Missy opened the door directly to her right, and began to walk.

Sure enough, it took only a few seconds to find the Doctor (she had turned a corner to avoid Missy’s search), and Missy picked up her pace again. The Doctor wasn’t wearing heels, unlike Rose, and Missy’s breathing was already ragged, giving the Doctor a significant head start.

The Doctor obviously had obtained prior knowledge of the mansion layout in the past two weeks. Missy found herself falling farther and farther behind, and closer and closer to an eventual loss.

The rules said that if Missy turned off London, she won, but there was nothing in there for the Doctor turning it off. She was being an extra bitch, per usual, and for lack of a more period-appropriate term. “Doctor, can you slow down a _bit_?” Missy grumbled to herself. The Doctor stole a concerned look over her shoulder, but seeing Missy in no serious physical harm, continued her mad dash to where Missy presumed the safe was located.

The Doctor approached a small wooden door, and yanked it open. Inside was a silver safe with a familiarly shaped keyhole, and the Doctor inserted her stolen key and clicked open the lock. Missy could only stare in horror as the Doctor reached inside and flicked the switch to turn off Pocket Universe London.

And everything collapsed into black.

* * *

Missy came to either a few minutes or six hours later with an intense need for a tall glass of water and the Australian national anthem lodged quite firmly in her head. The former was relatively unsurprising; the latter a bit strange.

She found her wife, now dressed in her usual rainbow-striped t-shirt and blue trousers, making her some tea at the stove. The Doctor and Rose had evidently carried Missy from the shut-down Pocketdon to the dining room and laid her down on the carpet.

“You’re up!” said Rose, who had also changed into clothes that fit her timeline better. “How are you?”

Missy waved away the question, and instead said, “That was wonderful.”

“See, Rose? I told you she’d like our plotting.” The Doctor poured boiling water into a teacup and mixed some sugar in, bringing the tea over to Missy and setting it on the table above her.

“Your hair is a mess,” Missy commented, noting the tangled blonde birds’ nest atop the Doctor’s head. Missy took a breath and stood up. She steadied herself on the dining table — the reboot had apparently messed with her balance — and felt a sturdy hand around her waist. “I don’t need help,” she muttered, but she didn’t really mind the feel of the Doctor supporting her whatsoever.

“Maybe I need help,” said the Doctor.

“I’ll be adjusting the climate settings, or something,” said Rose quickly, and winked at Missy on her way out.

“Pick up the tea,” said the Doctor, and Missy did. The Doctor began to slowly escort her out of the dining room, her arm around Missy’s waist all the while, and if Missy hypothetically rested her head on the Doctor’s shoulder, nobody was there to see it.

The Doctor guided Missy into her and Rose’s bedroom. Missy was too tired to comment on her chosen location, and instead giggled like an exhausted drunk girl at a party. “Come on,” said the Doctor softly.

Missy had no energy to argue, and climbed onto the bed, sitting up against the backboard. The Doctor and Rose had evidently removed her heels, leaving her in soft lacy white socks, and Missy wiggled her toes in freedom and relief. The Doctor adjusted herself so she was sitting between Missy’s thighs, pressing a kiss to the tender skin directly underneath Missy’s ear. “I outsmarted you,” she said, lazily.

“And killed thousands of poor Victorians.”

“Edwardians, I thought? They were simulated, anyway.”

“Possibly.” Missy tried to run her hand through the Doctor’s hair, but snagged her fingers in the rampant knots. The Doctor cried out. “Let me brush that.”

“No!”

“Please?”

The Doctor turned around to kiss Missy properly, good and flush on the mouth, tasting like vanilla and the smoky streets of Pocket Victorian Possibly Edwardian London. “…Fine. There’s a brush on the side table.”

Missy squeaked and scrambled for the brush, resting the bristles on the top of the Doctor’s hair. “Stay still.”

“Be gentle!”

“Stay still,” said Missy again, and began to run the brush through the Doctor’s straw-blonde hair. She was gentle, although she may have accidentally tugged on some of the knots too hard. It wasn’t her fault that the Doctor had always hated brushing her own hair.

“This is nice,” said the Doctor, humming contentedly and leaning back into Missy’s touch. She slipped her ankles under Missy’s, tangling their legs in a fantastic knot of Time Lord limbs. “I missed you, you know.”

“I’ll be here for a while yet,” Missy assured her.

The Doctor ran her fingers across Missy’s leg, still clothed in her purple skirt, and said, “Why don’t you take this off?”

“How very forward of you,” said Missy, who was still much too tired and dizzy for lovemaking of any kind.

“It must be hot.”

“I’d think so.”

“Missy!”

Missy laughed; she hadn’t felt this relaxed in ages. “There are a few layers, and it does get warm, yes.”

“You can pause for a minute.” The Doctor batted Missy’s hands away from her head. “Take it off.”

Missy had no qualms about being naked in front of the Doctor, but she didn’t undress all the way; it would be too chilly, anyway. She took off her skirt and waistcoat, bum padding, and unlaced her corset with a bit of twisting and bending, leaving on only her combinations before crawling back into bed.

The Doctor managed to tangle their legs together much more, and let out a satisfied little sigh. “Sing me a song.”

Missy resumed her brushing and hummed for the right note. “ _Australians let us all rejoice…_ ”

“What _is_ that?”

“National — doesn’t matter. Um, _you are my sunshine, my only sunshiiiine,_ ” she sang quietly, and the Doctor shifted to be pressed even more against Missy, squishing her breasts a bit. “ _You make me happy/when skies are grey._ ”

“ _You’ll never know, dear, how much I love you_ ,” the Doctor chimed in.

“ _Please don’t take my sunshine away_.”


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the indulgent missyrose u've all been waiting for, really

Missy and Rose had never done anything alone together.

That was technically untrue. They had done things together without the Doctor before Missy was Missy, and they had done things together recently that involved lots of kissing and the time-consuming unlacing of an 1890s corset, but none of those made Rose feel like she was entirely responsible to prevent Missy from stabbing a fork into her best friend’s heart.

“And then I said to Aimee, he is _not_ worth all that trouble. And you know what?”

“What?” said Missy, flatly.

“She got with him anyway!” Holly shook her head, evidently not noticing Missy’s complete lack of interest. “Anyway, how are you, Rose? Still gallivanting around space with that husband of yours?” Holly sighed; she had always had a bit of a crush on the Doctor, and Rose knew it.

“Oh! Actually, he died again.”

Holly squinted at Rose. The whole Time Lord aspect had always been difficult for her to wrap her head around, and Rose didn’t blame her. “Is he still…”

“Well, she’s a few inches shorter.” Rose saw Holly raise an eyebrow at she, but she didn’t comment any further. “Absolutely gorgeous, though.”

“Eh. Could have been taller, I think.”

Rose shot Missy a side glance. Missy had been lounging on her chair at the coffee shop they’d met with Holly at for hours, a half-finished latte hanging from her hand. If Missy smoked, Rose was sure she would be halfheartedly smoking. (Did Missy smoke?) “Please?” she hissed.

“I’m just saying,” said Missy.

“Well, don’t.”

Holly sucked on the straw of her iced coffee and said, “Who is she, anyway?” with a nod at Missy.

“Oh, God,” said Rose, because it was impossible to explain Missy within a few minutes. “Reformed murderer?”

“Really?” asked Holly.

“Reformed?” said Missy. “I’m Rose’s girlfriend.”

_Girlfriend?_ Rose squinted at Missy, not able to contest the claim within their current constraints. She didn’t mind the label (she never thought she’d be stressing out over whether or not she was somebody’s girlfriend at her age. Was this what married life was like?), it was just that she would have appreciated Missy _asking her_ before she just introduced herself to Rose’s friend like that. “Yeah. That.” Rose made sure to think _What the fuck????_ very loudly in hopes of Missy overhearing.

“Aren’t you married?” observed Holly, taking another long drag of her coffee.

Rose sighed. “Yes.”

“Okay.”

Rose loved Holly, and she thought that Holly was a wonderfully interesting person. She was creative, she was smart, she was confident… but Rose also thought her best quality was that she never asked a single followup question. _I spent the last year in space in a telephone box!_ Okay. _I’m marrying an alien!_ Sounds legitimate. _I just punched a Dalek and nearly got killed!_ Sure. (And she never even asked “What’s a Dalek?”)

A Britney Spears song started to play, and Holly picked up her phone. “One second. Be right back,” she said, slipping out of the coffee shop to answer it.

The minute she was gone, Rose whirled to Missy. “What the hell, dude? Girlfriend? No warning, whatsoever? And you can’t sit up straight? What’s that corset good for? Not to mention, you haven’t spoken a word that wasn’t dry and sarcastic for an hour. Could you just be normal for me to have brunch with my friend?”

Missy blinked her clear blue eyes and frowned. “Dude?” she asked.

“ _Is that really all you got from that?_ ”

“I just think it isn’t very dignified, darling.”

“Gah! You are the absolute worst to talk to sometimes, d’you know that?”

Missy sat up slightly straighter and began to touch up her lipstick in a tiny mirror she procured from her pocket. “Like ripping out your hair, you said?”

“Like ripping out my hair,” agreed Rose.

Holly jogged back in. “Sorry. Spam call. You two all right?”

“Doc wants us back on the ol’ Time and Relative Dimension,” said Missy, leaning into her Scottish accent, slamming her plastic coffee cup on the table. “Pleasure meeting you. Holly, was it?”

“Yes.”

“We don’t have to go —” Rose felt her phone buzz and she pulled it out. The Doctor had texted her to return to the TARDIS. She raised her eyebrows at Missy (how did she know?) but got up anyway.

“It was so good to see you, Rose.”

“It was good to see you too,” said Rose, and she hugged Holly across the table. “See you soon.”

“No aliens.”

Rose thought about Missy’s two hearts, pounding away twin beats beneath fat and skin and nerve endings until the end of time and maybe after. Rose thought about the way Missy breathed in the night, whispering words in a language from another place and time. Rose thought about the way Missy tasted like steel and fire and peaches and a million other flavours from a million things Rose had never tried before in her life.

“No aliens,” promised Rose.

She was getting better at lying.

* * *

“Girlfriend?” yelled Rose when they were safe and sound in the TARDIS. (The Doctor had needed them for basic repair reasons, then she was done. There was no point in meeting up with Holly again once they’d said good-bye.)

“It seemed like a good idea at the time?”

“Does it now?”

Missy pursed her lips. “Honestly, yes.”

“…Yeah. All right.” Rose felt a bit deflated. She collapsed into Missy’s arms, feeling those comforting heartbeats in time with Rose’s own, the sound pressed between the bones and tendons of their chests. “I do like you.”

“I know.”

“You’re supposed to say something like, I like you too.”

Missy was quiet for a long while, the only sound their breaths and hearts, and she said, “Okay, fine, I love you or whatever.”

“Missy!”

“Shut up! I’m not saying it again.”

“I love you too, Missy,”

Missy kissed her, and all was somewhat well again, for a little while.


	13. Chapter 13

Rose woke up with a panther wrapped around her torso.

It took her a few seconds to realize that it was actually Missy, who had curled herself entirely around Rose’s body and had her face pressed to Rose’s shoulder. Rose was more than a little concerned with whether or not Missy could breathe, but she seemed to be doing just fine, so it was okay. 

“Morning,” said Rose. 

Missy seemed still asleep, which meant Rose was trapped, for the time being. She thought about texting the Doctor, but decided against it.

“You’re so warm,” said Missy, her lips pressed against Rose’s skin. Not asleep, then. Just pretending. 

“I have to go.”

“Stay in bed.” She tangled her bare ankles with Rose’s, kissing her gently on the back of her neck. Missy seemed so peaceful and happy like this, it was hard to imagine she was the same woman who could murder entire _planets_ at the drop of a hat. 

“Maybe a little while longer,” Rose allowed, twisting a stray strand of Missy’s hair that had fallen over her shoulder. “The Doctor’s making breakfast.”

“So we’ll get food poisoning?” 

Rose laughed. “Probably.” She rolled over and nudged her nose in the crook of Missy’s neck. “You’re very clingy this morning.”

“Only because it’s cold.”

“No other reason.” 

Missy stroked her hair, as if Rose was some needy, blonde cat, and said, “At least I don’t steal the blankets.”

“Oh God.” Rose winced at the very mention of blanket-stealing. The Doctor was notorious for taking blankets at midnight, as they both knew. In Rose’s opinion, nothing could be worse than waking up at half past three, shivering in the cold, your spouse lying at the other side of the bed.

Of course, with Missy, she woke up at half past three sweating and squished like an orange in a juicer. Which one was better was really fair game.

“You look nice,” said Missy.

Rose smiled. Real compliments were few and far between, when it came to Missy. “Why, thank you.” 

For somebody who wore her hair up in a tiny updo all day, Missy had an amazingly impressive amount of hair. It was floofy. It stuck up on the right. It was curly in one place and fairly straight in another, and wispy at the back. She had taken her makeup mostly off (her nighttime routine was impressive in its length), although the corner of her lip was still smeared in pink. She looked a mess. She was gorgeous. “You, too,” said Rose. 

Missy kissed her and Rose lost her hands entirely in her hair.

“Good… morning, ladies,” said a voice from the door.

Rose broke from Missy’s mouth. “Doctor. Morning.” 

“You and Missy?”

The Doctor was wearing a long, frilly, button-up shirt that did not fit her small and slender frame whatsoever, and presumably (hopefully?) some kind of underpant situation underneath. She patted at the top of her hair, which was standing straight up. “You. Missy,” she said, again, sounding fairly shellshocked.

“Is something wrong?” said Missy.

The Doctor blinked. “You…”

“And Missy,” supplicated Rose, with a nod. “You didn’t know we were…”

“Sleeping together?” said Missy.

“ _Dating_ ,” said Rose. 

“I did not,” said the Doctor, and took some heaving breaths.

“We clearly told you,” said Rose.

The Doctor pressed the back of her hand to her forehead, and said, “I thought you were kidding.”

“I kissed her. In front of you,” said Missy, dryly. Rose hoped that this wouldn’t become one of their famous Master-Doctor spats. “You’re an idiot.”

“I thought that was a joke.”

“Is something wrong?” said Rose. “We can talk.”

“Nothing’s wrong. If you’re happy.”

“I am.”

“I was just surprised.” The Doctor pat the top of her head. It miraculously did nothing for the staticky bits. 

Missy and Rose, warm and cozy in bed, stared at the Doctor, whose legs were getting goosebumps. The Doctor wrapped her arms with her floppy, too-long sleeves around herself.

“Come to bed,” said Missy with a sigh.

The Doctor smiled. “Really?”

“Well. I’m married to you. You’re married to her. We’re… this,” said Missy, tucking a strand of hair behind Rose’s ear with a surprising amount of tenderness. “Come here, Doctor.” 

The Doctor smiled, and pursed her lips to keep from smiling, and smiled anyway. She plopped herself between Missy and Rose, and said, “Ladies.”


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you will realize what i mean by this later but this is a two chapter storyline! if one can call it that!

“This job _sucks_ ,” said the Doctor, slumping over her three baskets of unfolded laundry and tossing a lacy white pair of combinations across the room. “And Missy’s underwear sucks too.”

“Oh, hush,” said Missy, furrowing her brows.

Rose smiled, hoisting a cardboard box onto her hip like a baby. “It’s just a bit of spring cleaning, Doctor. We’ll be done in no time.”

“We _could_ be done,” the Doctor said, with a familiar mischievous smirk. “Or we could take a break…”

“Come on.”

“There’s a beautiful oasis just at the edge of this system. We could go swimming..”

“Just a little longer and we’ll be done,” Rose pleaded, playing with a strand of hair that hung by her ear.

Missy frowned at her own chore, the half-cleaned dining room table. “You _know_ I hate to say it, but I think the Doctor has the right idea.” She grimaced at herself, and then the lavender scented all-purpose cleaning spray in her hand. 

The Doctor beamed at Missy. “Now, how do you feel about a vacation?”

***

Somehow, when Missy heard “oasis,” she hadn’t quite registered blistering sun and a desert reaching out to every horizon. She winced against the blinding light, reflecting against the tiny sand particles and bouncing straight into her poor eyeballs. “I am _not_ dressed for this.”

Neither of her travelling companions answered. Missy blinked against the sun, her eyes slowly adjusting, and realized exactly why.

For about fifty feet, everything was horrible, beige sand. And then, as if seamlessly rising out of the ground, a shimmering green wall reached up to the cloudless blue sky with spires and decorations enough to last Missy a lifetime. Maybe _two_ lifetimes.

“It’s beautiful,” Rose breathed.

A hot breath of wind blew a handful of sand into Missy’s face, and she sputtered, suddenly all too aware of the sweat beading on her skin. _Horses sweat, men perspire, and ladies merely glow,_ she told herself, but her body seemed to be convinced it had grown hooves overnight. “What are we waiting for?” she snapped, stepping off the TARDIS and onto the desert. Her heels sank instantly into the sand, and Missy growled.

Rose, whose turquoise sandal straps reached nearly up to her knees, smiled brightly. “You were right. I think a holiday will do us all a bit of good,” she said to the Doctor.

“Always am!”

They reached the green wall, and the Doctor tapped the stone. It shined faintly like glass, but it was entirely opaque; some kind of alien material, Missy guessed. She would have liked to get her hands on more of it. “Should we knock?” 

“I don’t know. Maybe they expect us to wait here,” said Rose.

Missy was not content to stand around drowning in her own sweat, suffocating in her woolen purple dress. Without a hint of trepidation, she stepped forward, and knocked three times on the surface.

For a few long, silent seconds, they stood there, waiting for a response. Missy sniffed. Rose clicked her tongue. The Doctor muttered, “ _Aaany second now._ ”

“Maybe this is the wrong spot,” Rose wondered.

The wall started to creak. 

“Maybe not,” said Missy.

The green glasslike surface shuddered and a section slowly sunk into the ground, revealing another, more mundane secondary wall. This one had an obvious red door and two guards standing in front. 

Missy had never seen this species of person before. Despite their humanoid shape, with a head and legs and arms all in the same place as hers or Rose’s, they weren’t covered with anything like scales or feathers or anything as boring as _skin_. She could see right through to their veins and bones and all their other pulsing, beautiful bits, expect for the places their uniforms covered, which seemed to be made of some sturdy reddish wood that overlapped and was decorated with paint in swirly patterns all over.

“Hi!” said the Doctor, more friendly than Missy would have liked. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m the Doctor, and these are my partners, Rose and Missy.”

One guard raised a hand in greeting. “What brings you to the Oasis?”

“Just the Oasis? No room for other Oasises?” said Missy, under her breath. The guard shot a glare at her with orange eyes. “Well, so _rry_.”

“Family holiday, sir!” said the Doctor cheerfully. 

The guard crossed their arms. “Identification?”

“Yessir. One moment please.” The Doctor had switched out her usual, ridiculous costume for an equally ridiculous sundress, covered with polka dots and a yellow flower on one breast. A purse covered in bright pineapples swung from her shoulder, and she dug around in it until she found the wallet containing her psychic paper. “This good enough for you?”

“Of course, Mrs. Tyler. Come on in.”

The Oasis, despite its uncreative moniker, was undeniably breathtaking. Thankfully, most of the materials weren’t as shiny as the wall, although Missy was not entirely inclined to notice. “Do you think they sell clothes here?” she whispered to the Doctor.

“I don’t know. I’m going to ask where the spring is.”

“The what?”

The Doctor bounded away, dust at her heels. (That was another benefit of the Oasis — the ground was packed dirt instead of shifting sand). “I’ll help you find some clothes,” said Rose. 

“Thank you.”

They walked inside the first shop they found, a little wooden thing with white clothes flapping about outside. The person in the back had the same clear skin as the guards had, but curly black hair instead of a bald head. “Good morning,” they said.

“Good morning,” Missy said, and Rose replied in kind. “Have you got anything that isn’t…” _Only appropriate for a seven-year-old’s birthday party?_ “…so floofy and white?”

“We have swimming costumes in green, red, yellow, purple…”

Missy perked up. “Purple?”

***

The sun whispering over Missy’s skin, the fabric of her light skirt swishing around her legs, she stepped into the Oasis Spring. There were several gender options out front, and she’d chosen the one that looked a bit like a triangle and a dot, in hopes of finding the Doctor. Rose had followed at her heels.

The swimming costume covered the necessary bits to prevent the Doctor from getting a fierce nosebleed in front of several clear-skinned extraterrestials, although it didn’t cover enough to prevent the Doctor from getting a _moderate_ nosebleed, which was the kind Missy liked to encourage. And it was gloriously purple.

(And had a middling amount of frills).

The springs looked fresh and cool and glorious. Glass people milled and splashed around, along with visitors from other planets: people made of fire, people with fabric on them enough to clothe an army, and of course, a familiar swoosh of blonde hair visible under the surface of the water. 

Rose dipped a toe in the pool from the rock edge and gasped. “It’s cold.”

“This entire planet is hotter than the guts of a volcano, Rose Tyler. This spring is simply a sweet, sweet release.” Missy untied the skirt around her waist and it fluttered softly to the ground. 

“Is that the Doctor?” said Rose, pointing to the blonde seeming to have a grand old time swimming around under the surface of the water.

“I would presume.” Missy tracked her movements in the pool.

“She’s been under there a while,” Rose said, doubtfully. “Is she all right?”

“Her bypass will hold out, I’m sure.” Missy took a few graceful steps backward, sprung forward, and dove into the pool. It was cold, at first, but she relished the absence of the dense, hot desert air. Her own respiratory bypass kicked in, ridding her of the necessity to breathe. 

Through the blurriness of the water, the Doctor was treading water and apparently participating in a lively signed conversation with a blue, fishlike woman. Missy kicked towards her and, keeping as silent as possible, flung her arms around the Doctor’s waist.

The Doctor burst up to the open air and shrieked. “Who — what —”

“Simply me, my dear,” said Missy, resting her chin on the Doctor’s shoulder.

“Hmph.”

Without her heels to make her taller, Missy’s feet were flat on the ground, giving the Doctor a few inches of height on her. She found she didn’t entirely dislike it. “I interrupted you quite rudely, didn’t I.”

“Actually, I was nearly…”

Missy pulled her underwater again. _This planet is far too hot_ , she complained in the Doctor’s head, her arms still hooked around her middle. The Doctor squirmed.

_You’re embarrassing me!_

_Shall I let go?_

The Doctor twisted her finger in a strand of Missy’s hair, now free to float about in the spring. _Nooooo._

There was a shout from above the water, a rush of bubbles, and a splash, and Rose Tyler paddled up to them, shivering. She burst up to the surface. The Doctor hit Missy’s hands away and followed her wife. Missy, begrudgingly, came after. 

“It’s definitely cold,” said Rose, shivering. “How do you stand it?”

“Superior built-in heating systems,” said Missy, watching her own dark chestnut hair spool and swish lazily in the perfectly clear water. 

Rose pouted. “Not fair.”

“You’ll get used to it,” said the Doctor. She dipped back underwater (the Doctor, when left to her own devices, had always been a regular little fish). Missy, belatedly, wondered what she was _wearing_ ; had she simply remembered to wear a swimming costume under her sundress, or was she wearing her regular underclothes? Were her regular underclothes black with little stars on? Missy couldn’t remember. 

“Can she talk under there?”

“Nobody can. No air for sound,” said Missy, airily, who was not entirely sure that was how it worked. Oh, well; she hadn’t taken physics in centuries, and it sounded about right. “But I’ve noticed her telepathy is getting stronger.”

“Didn’t you say my brain wasn’t developed enough for that?” 

Missy smiled. “Yes.”

Rose glared good-naturedly and splashed her.

Missy ran her fingers over her arm absentmindedly, ignoring Rose’s obvious attempt to rile her up, and said, “I can practically _feel_ my skin crisping.”

“Why didn’t you put on sunblock?”

“I forgot it on the TARDIS.”

“Go get it.” Rose disappeared under the water for a moment and burst back up. “I’m not going to listen to you complain all day.”

Missy frowned, but climbed out of the pool anyway and wrapped a clean towel around herself. It was not, she thought, the Tylers’ towel, but she didn’t care much about the family she’d stolen it from. No amount of kissing could change her overall lack of morals. 

The desert heat was cut nicely by the water dripping off her skin, although there was no workaround for her shoes sinking into the sand, and her feet were uncomfortably wet inside them. 

She wasn’t all too worried about that, though, because she was staring directly at the TARDIS, and the TARDIS had the same problem as her shoes.

_Police Public Call Box_ , said the big white words, which should have been at the top of the spaceship. But it had sunk all the way into the sand, and they were now below her knee. _Police Public Call Box_.

Looked like she wasn’t getting any sunblock.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> pt 2 of ch 14 AT LONG LAST!!! its v long to make up for the pause. <33333

Missy stared at the sunken TARDIS for a long while, contemplating what to do. She should tell the Doctor; that much was clear. But the Doctor and Rose had been having so much  _ fun _ , and Missy had been scrambling around their dynamic ever since they picked her up…

What were those thoughts? They weren’t  _ morals, _ were they? The Doctor and Rose’s horrible little morals weren’t rubbing off on her, surely. Quite possibly the harsh sunlight of the desert was addling her thoughts. 

She shoved all that aside. The best course of action was, surely, to let the Doctor know something was wrong. 

With that thought in mind, Missy dashed back through the shining gates of the Oasis, barely sparing a polite greeting for the guards. Rose and the Doctor, however, were nowhere to be found — not even in the cheerful spring she’d left them at. They must’ve gone off without her. Missy just barely resisted yelling at the unfriendly sun in frustration.

“Hello!” said the fish woman with whom the Doctor had been chatting when Missy was here last. “I didn’t think I’d see you back here.”

“Good afternoon,” said Missy. Was it afternoon? There was no way to tell. (This planet was also entirely foreign to her. She had never studied its linguistics or standards of proprietary, not to mention that the mermaid-fish-woman seemed to be on holiday too, which meant that Missy’s chances of sounding overtly rude or incomprehensible were through the roof and increasing every moment.) “Erm, I seem to have lost my…” 

Again, there was no way of telling how the mermaid woman or the Oasis denoted relationships. Perhaps they would not recognize Missy and the Doctor’s marriage whatsoever, on basis of appearance or gender or even the words they said to each other, but that was a chance Missy was willing to take.

“My wife. And her wife. Blonde, about five feet and a half, can’t stop talking?” The description fit both of them, technically. Maybe Missy had a type. “You seemed to be chatting it up before, so.”

“Oh, the  _ Doctor _ ! They headed to lunch.” The mermaid woman ducked underwater for a second, and then splashed back up. 

“And where would that be?”

The mermaid woman shrugged. “There’s a place across the street? I don’t know if they went there, though.”

Missy thanked her and went on her not-so-merry way. 

* * *

The Doctor and Rose were not at the place across the street. They were not at the place down the street. They were not at the place on the next street over. If Missy hadn’t known any better, she would have said they had disappeared off the face of the Oasis altogether, because that was impossible.

And yet. Seemingly more probable.

Missy reminded herself that she was neither in a Sherlock Holmes story nor Ba Sing Se, and her girlfriends were probably in some nice shady place drinking tea and gossipping. (What did Rose and the Doctor talk about anyway? She couldn’t remember). 

_ Help _ .

Missy jumped almost a foot in the air, a chill running over her skin despite the heat of the Oasis. The word had been undeniably clear in her mind, as if by a talented telepath who had fallen out of practice. She stood very still in the centre of the street and listened for anything else, but nothing came.

It could, of course,  _ not _ be the Doctor. It could be anyone else. It could be somebody playing a cruel trick on her.

_ Missy. _

Missy looked around. That couldn’t be a coincidence. Her  _ name… _

A stab of dizziness flickered through her, and she reached out for something to grab onto. She was rather susceptible to dehydration this time around, and she had barely had any water all day.

Her hand met with empty air, and there was a moment as she fell when she was certain this would be the last time for a very long time she saw the sunlight.  _ Doct— _ she started to say, in her mind, but she was cut off by a wave of black over her vision before she could finish.

Missy awoke in different clothes than she’d fallen in, which was not the most pressing issue but the most immediately noticeable. They covered more of her, first of all, and they had trousers attached. She hadn’t worn trousers in a long time.

The next thing she noticed was the person crouching in front of her. She opened her eyes properly, and the blurry figure coalesced into Rose Tyler.

“Oh, _good_ ,” said Rose. That was who had probably changed her clothes, most likely. They zipped up in front and seemed to favor practicality over fashion, the fabric colored a greyish green color and the weave of the thing a bit itchy against her skin. Her shoes had been changed too, to a pair of sturdy ankle-height boots.   
Missy rubbed her eyes. “How long?”

“Six and a half minutes!” shouted a voice from the corner. There was the Doctor, then, which answered her next question before it had time to form in her mind. 

“You’re underneath,” said Rose.

Missy was about to ask  _ Underneath where? _ but a door slammed open before she had a chance. “She’s awake,” said Rose, helpfully. 

Missy sat up and got a chance to get a proper look around the room.

It was a jail cell. The general area was smaller than Missy had imagined at first, and it was shady save for a lantern that Rose clutched. Three walls were made of plain, grey stone, and one was typical bars that appeared to be made of something iron-aligned. She didn’t see the Doctor, which concerned her, but she did see one of the glass Oasis citizens. They were wearing a tall-collared robe that Missy might have found fashionable in a past life but now thought of as unnecessarily gaudy (even for  _ her _ ) and gloves decorated with intricate embroidery. A delicate sword was strapped to their hip — something made for sparring more than real battle.

“Hello,” they said to Missy. Missy glared at them. “Sleep well?”

“No,” Missy growled. Adrenaline coursed through her veins. She could burst up, steal that sword, hold it to their neck, and find some way to get the keys to this place. That didn’t account for the Doctor, who was still mysteriously missing despite speaking earlier, but Missy assumed she could figure this out as she went along.

Yet as soon as she tried to stand suddenly up, her head swam again, her vision clouding over just as it had before. Some dirty trick this was, interfering with her telepathic circuits to incapacitate her.

(Smart, yes. It was very smart. Missy vowed to try to use it later, just to see if she could turn it against them or the Doctor.)

“Don’t move too quickly,” warned their captor, smirking. “You’re feisty, aren’t you?”

“Shut it,” said Missy.

“Strong, too.” They referred to Missy’s telepathic prowess, probably. She couldn’t help but preen at the compliment. “Would you like a hand up?”

“No, thank you,” said Missy. She climbed to her feet herself, careful not to startle the Oasisian into shoving themself into her brain again. 

They nodded at her, turned around, and unlocked the door. She watched them — maybe now she could make a move.

Another wave of dizziness.  _ Or maybe not. _

She looked back at Rose, who she’d nearly forgotten in her confusion. “Go,” Rose mouthed.

“The Doctor,” Missy hissed, waving a hand around.

“You’ll see.”

The Oasisian waved her to follow them through the door, and she did, refusing to let her guard down. The hallway outside was dimly lit and drafty, a far cry from the burning sun on the surface. ( _ Underneath where?  _ Missy had meant to ask earlier. Underneath the very streets of the Oasis, she thought now. An entire underground maze — if it was as extensive as Missy presumed — of tunnels that served as a prison.  _ But why would they need that? _ )

Her captor did not lead her far before stopping in front of another jail cell. This one had no bars or any way to clearly see the prisoner inside, only a translucent glass wall through which a fuzzy, hunched-over silhouette was visible. 

“Your Doctor,” said her captor, and lay their hand on the surface of the glass. It seemed to melt beneath their touch, and what the cell contained was made clear.

A woman sat curled up in on herself — the Doctor. ( _ Your _ Doctor, her captor had said. Yes.  _ Her _ Doctor.) She appeared entirely unharmed and unaffected by captivity at all, save for the shackle attaching her wrist to the ground.

“Missy!” she said, cheerfully.

Missy pushed past her captor to rush forward to her wife. “Doctor,” she said, cradling her face in her hands. “Are you…”

“I’m fine! Been in worse predicaments, you know.” The tone of her voice implied unsaid words:  _ worse predicaments that  _ you _ caused _ . Missy ignored that to press a kiss to the Doctor’s forehead. The Doctor giggled. “They’ve just got me all chained up.”

Missy knew better than to use telepathy around the glass person standing at the door by now. Thankfully, her and the Doctor had been around long enough that they knew a million different silent ways to communicate. She tapped the Doctor’s leg as she murmured pointless sentiments in her ear, appearing to be a nervous spouse as they laboriously communicated in an alternate Morse code.  _ U OK? _

_ Y. Is Rose. _

_ Rose good.  _

_ She ur clothes, _ tapped the Doctor, which confused Missy due to the complete lack of a verb. 

_ Changed them? _ she asked.

_ Y. _

Their captor cleared their throat. “Visit time is up,” they said. “You have somebody to see.”

* * *

That  _ somebody  _ turned out to be the glass-skinned queen of the Oasis, whose name sounded like  _ Devvik _ although Missy couldn’t be sure of the spelling. She blinked languidly at Missy and said, “Master.”

“Yes,” said Missy. “Well, not quite.”  
“Our records show that your name is the Master.”

Missy nodded. “It is. Erm, I changed it up a bit. Because of…” Missy gestured at herself, although she wasn’t sure how the Oasisians registered a change of gender. “I’m Missy, now. Your Majesty.”

“Missy,” said Queen Devvik.

“Begging your indulgence?” tried Missy.

Queen Devvik smiled, slightly. “No need, Missy-Master. Or is it simply Missy?”

“Uh… simply Missy, Your Majesty.”

“Missy, then. I apologize for the brash manner with which you, and your partners, were brought here. Unfortunately, my word is not trusted as it once was in these walls, and you have been known to act… unpredictably.” The queen looked at the person who had brought Missy into the room. Missy thought there was a lot of politics there that she wasn’t privy to.

“Your Majesty. I am willing to listen to your terms, on the condition that you let my wife and girlfriend go.” When had Missy begun to prioritize their well being over her own, she wondered? 

“Trust me, Missy, I would if I could. That is… not within my power, at the moment.”

Missy chewed her lip to prevent herself from retorting that it seemed absolutely possible, seeing as Queen Devvik was sitting on a large chair and wearing a very big hat. “I understand, Your Majesty.”

“I can guarantee their safety as long as you cooperate,” said Queen Devvik, sounding not at all excited about the idea.

“Hmm,” said Missy. “And what do you want me to do?”

“There is a country —” That was the wrong word. Occasionally, the TARDIS would hear words that couldn’t be translated into Gallifreyan or English and it would just assume something similar. Missy could tell this was one of those times.  _ Country _ rubbed her the wrong way, as if it was just slightly wrong in the sixth dimension. Which it was. “—directly bordering us, with which we’ve been in contact for quite some time. Last month, they stole an artefact that is very dear to us.”

“And you want me to get it back.”

A slight incline of Queen Devvik’s head.

“On one condition. I’m taking my Doctor.”

“No,” said her unnamed captor, behind her. Queen Devvik’s eyebrows furrowed, but she didn’t say anything. “You can take the blonde girl.”

“Rose?”

No answer.

“Fine. And your sword.”

“No.”

“Your sword,” said Missy again. She had no leverage in this situation except her natural charm and intimidation, but she had gotten out of more than a few situations with nothing except her natural charm and intimidation. 

Queen Devvik nodded, and Missy felt a leather handle pressed into her hand. Thankfully, her new clothes had a spot for a sword to be looped on, and Missy fixed her new weapon to her hip. “We will escort you to the other country —” There it was again, that rough spot in reality making the sentence clumsy and wrong. “—and you will retrieve the gem yourself.”

“Fine,” said Missy.

* * *

Devvik’s idea of escorting Missy and Rose was, it turned out, a cramped shuttle down the bumpy stone tunnels under the desert. Just as Missy had suspected, the tunnels extended far past the confines of the Oasis itself, probably for easy navigation when the sun was particularly hot. 

Rose let out a muffled cry as her shoulder slammed into Missy’s side for the twenty fifth time. “Sorry,” she said.

Missy said nothing. She had not spoken the entire automated shuttle ride, which had lasted thirty some minutes and counting, and she was not going to start now.

“Kay,” said Rose.

They rode in jostling silence, bumping into each other every few minutes when the shuttle turned a corner. Eventually, Rose gave up attempting to give Missy any personal space and began to clutch to her side. It made the ride significantly more uncomfortable.

“Why are you being like this?” said Rose.

Missy did not respond.

“God, you’re awful sometimes.”

It was true. Missy did not care whether Rose thought she was awful, though. She had suffered much, much worse.

“Are you mad at me? Is that it?”

Missy offered no response. 

“Are you mad at the Doctor?”

Nothing.

“Are you worried about her?”

“I’m not worried about her,” Missy snapped. 

“At least you’re  _ talking _ .” 

Missy shoved Rose away from her, breathing fresh air in the split second she had before they fell into each other again. “Shut up.”

“You’re worried.”

“I’m _ not _ !”

“She’ll be fine.”

Missy was about to assure Rose that she knew that, thank you very much, when they both jolted forward out of nowhere. “I think we’re here,” said Missy.

She gave Missy a hand out. The tunnel they’d stopped in was identical to the tunnels that Queen Devvik had commanded her in and they had been captured in, although illuminated better. Missy felt Rose clutch her hand tightly.

Hand in hand, they walked down the tunnel. It was straight ahead, at least, which meant no chances of getting lost. It was dim all the way through, with a murky future and the chunky shuttle to their backs, and they kept walking together step after lonely step.

“D’ya think we’ll have to steal it?” said Rose.

“No,” said Missy, who knew what she meant by “it.” “I don’t think they’d send me, specifically, if they wanted something stolen. That’s not what I’m good at.”

“What are you good at?”

Missy let Rose guess at that one.

“No.”

“They would have sent the Doctor, otherwise.”

“There’s no way…” Rose trailed off, catching sight of a big metal door in front of them. “We’re meant to go through that, right?”

Missy  _ tsk _ ed. “I would assume so, darling.” 

“You know what they say about assuming,” said Rose, but she stepped forward and grasped hold of the door handle anyway, yanking it open towards them. They stepped through.

Of all the things Missy expected (and she had learned to expect a  _ lot _ , especially when the Doctor was even marginally involved) she had not thought that past that door there would be a huge…  _ stadium.  _ Rose clung to her arm as they looked around to the hundreds (thousands?) of people watching from the seats.

Missy shook her off and drew her rapier. “Who’s there?” she shouted. Rose took the chance to scamper off to the edge, finding safety in the anonymity of the crowd. Missy made sure to keep her eye on the blonde head navigating aliens in the distance. The Doctor might never forgive her if she lost her wife.

A cloaked figure stepped out from the other end of the arena. “Master,” he said, his voice so loud she wondered if it was artificially amplified.

“Missy!” she shouted.

“Missy,” he said, which she thought was decent of him. “You are here for the Crystal of the Yara.”

Was that what the glass people were called? Missy made a note to ask, later. “I think? Fancy artefact? There was a very pretty lady who was very upset about it missing.”

She faintly heard the figure mutter “They didn’t even tell her the name of the crystal,” sounding annoyed, and then more loudly, “ _ It’s the Crystal of the Yara. _ ” 

“Funny, my name was Yana once.”

She saw the figure visibly sigh, and shout, “DO YOU CHALLENGE ME FOR THE CRYSTAL OF THE YARA?”

“Uh.” Missy looked around and locked eyes with Rose. She could hear her think:  _ Oh God Missy, no Missy, please… _ “Yes?”

The blur of yellow that was Rose facepalmed.

_ Don’t worry,  _ said Missy telepathically, hoping that the Oasisians — Yara? — hadn’t blocked her off completely.  _ I was the second best fencer in the Academy. I can handle this.  _

_ Second best? _

Missy ignored that.

“Second best?” yelled Rose from the sidelines.

Missy ignored that, too. “My name is the Mistress of, erm, Gallifrey, and I challenge you for the Crystal of the Yara.”

Above, a sourceless voice boomed: “Let the challenge begin!” and glowing symbols flashed in her vision.  _ M: 5/5.  _ Then there was an alien sigil that translated somewhat to the Greek letter  _ Γ _ , which was also  _ 5/5.  _

The symbols disappeared before Missy could learn what they meant, and Γ (was that his name? Gamma?) charged at her without warning.

Missy nimbly leapt aside, thanking Rassilon and Rose Tyler that she was no longer wearing heels, and parried his many quick attacks. Gamma was skilled, sure, but Missy was more so — after all, she had lived a very, very long time. Something good had to come of that.

She scored her first point against Gamma in due course, her blade flashing in the sharp lights of the arena. The end of the sword struck his chest (it didn’t go through his skin, which made her wonder: was it naturally tough or was he armored?) and those bright symbols wavered in her eyes again:  _ M: 5/5, Γ: 4/5.  _

Ah.

The sounds of their swords clashing rang out through the stadium. Step. Step. Parry. Thrust. 

_ M: 5/5. Γ: 3/5.  _

Gamma growled at that, and Missy allowed herself a small smile. This was something she was good at, after all.

That proved to be a fatal mistake, as her arrogance so often was. (This far along in her life, she could afford to admit to some of her own flaws. And the Doctor had told her them so many times). 

_ M: 4/5. Γ: 3/5.  _

The one point had thrown her off her rhythm, but it only encouraged Gamma.  _ 3/5. 2/5. _

What would the Doctor say?

_ Give up. You’ve lost, Missy. This is it. It’s all over now. _

Missy blocked Gamma’s now-crazed strikes, but it was only a matter of time before that  _ 2  _ ticked down to  _ 1 _ , and then  _ 0 _ . What happened if she lost? Rose would be so disappointed. And the Doctor…

“Missy!” shouted a familiar voice from the stands. Rose. “Missy!” she said again.

Missy realized foggily that she was cheering her on.  _ Hm _ . Gamma lunged forward, and Missy didn’t let herself think — she reached out a leg, hooked it under Gamma’s foot, and sent him toppling to the packed dirt ground. She hit against his side once, twice, three times, until a green VICTORY! clouded her vision.

Missy wiped sweat off her brow.  _ Horses sweat, men perspire…  _ ah, fuck it. “Good effort,” she said. 

Gamma glared at her and climbed to his feet. “They said you’d be —”

“Weaker? Prettier? More easily influenced?” 

Rose raced up to her, flush despite only sitting down the entire time, and whispered in Missy’s ear, “That was really  _ fucking  _ hot.” 

Missy smirked. “See you around. Or not,” she said to Gamma, and to Rose, “I’ll teach you later.” 

“When we’re out of here, can you dip me down and kiss me?” said Rose.

“What?”

“Uh. Please?”

Missy raised her eyebrows. “Yes?”

“ _ Sweet _ .” 

Missy was distracted from indulging her request right then and there by another Oasis citizen (were they even in the Oasis anymore?) stepping down from the stands. She wore a large headdress and held a red box that seemed to glow from the top. “You… erm, won this,” she said, awkwardly.

“Seems so,” said Missy, reaching into the box and snatching out a cube-shaped, sparkling gem. “Hold this,” she said to Rose, and passed it to her. “Thank you.”

“Say hello to Devvie for me?” said the woman, hopefully.

“…Sure.” 

“From Xeqain.”

Missy nodded. “Will do. Ms Xeqain. Erm, pleasure to meet you? Just the way we came in, right?”

“The way you came in, yes,” said Xeqain.

* * *

(Missy kissed Rose as soon as they were out).

* * *

When they were back on the TARDIS, safe and sound (it turned out the Yara had the ability to manipulate the sand itself, eliciting comments of “holy shit they’re sandbenders!!” from Rose), the Doctor shook herself out and promptly kicked her shoes off. 

“Blessed mother of Rassilon, there’s a lot of sand out there,” she said, flopping down on the nearest couch and groaning into the pillow.

“But you’re all right,” said Missy.

“What? Yes.”

“Oh, good.”

Rose patted Missy on the back. “Told you. Tea?”

“No, thank you,” said Missy.

“For me!” said the Doctor, muffled by her pillow. She sat up properly and gestsured for Missy to join her. “What’d they make you do?”

“Swordfight,” responded Missy casually, throwing her legs over the Doctor’s and kissing her on the ear. “I  _ missed _ you.”

“You big softie. Swordfight?”

“Yyyyes.”

The Doctor’s eyes lit up. “You still got it?”

“I still got it,” said Missy, the less than ideal sentence structure strangely not bothering her one bit. “Want to give it a spin?”

“If I win I get to pick the show we watch tonight.”

Missy considered that. “You can’t pick She-Ra.”

“I can pick She-Ra if I want to pick She-Ra!” protested the Doctor, weaving her fingers through Missy’s and holding her hand tightly. “Just because you cry every time doesn’t mean we can’t watch She-Ra.”

“I don’t cry,” grumbled Missy.

The Doctor kissed her cheek. “Swordfight?”

“Please.”

“You  _ are _ getting better at this,” said the Doctor, as their swords struck with a dramatic clash. “Ah-ah-ah, stay still.”

“Why, so you can hit me?”

“No.” The Doctor attempted to poke her in the chest, but Missy maneuvered her sword away. “So you don’t waste all your energy  _ dancing _ .”

“Hah!”

The Doctor’s sword came dangerously close to Missy’s side, but Missy dodged just in time to miss it. “Careful,” the Doctor panted. “Don’t want to — impale you.”

“Now who’s wasting her energy?”

Quiet footsteps signalled somebody else entering the room to watch. Missy turned her head to see Rose, blushing and covering her mouth. “He _ llo _ ,” said Missy, flirtatiously.

That was Missy’s final choice; the Doctor twisted her sword out of her hand and Missy fell on the floor beneath her. The Doctor levelled the tip of her blade at Missy’s throat. “I win,” she said.

Rose said, “ _ Damn _ ,” under her breath.

“As I said,” explained Missy. “ _ Second _ best.” 


End file.
